


Coyote

by cliffbooth



Category: The Band (Band 1968)
Genre: Angst, Blowjobs, Drug Use, Fighting, First Time, M/M, Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, TW: violence and abuse, i want to give Robbie a hug but also I'm the one who put him through all of this so, it doesn't go well, lots of fighting, so much coke, this is all so out of character, very angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26108641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliffbooth/pseuds/cliffbooth
Summary: "I looked a coyote right in the face, on the road to Baljennie near my old home town. He went running thru the whisker wheat, chasing some prize down. And a hawk was playing with him, Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes! He had those same eyes just like yours, under your dark glasses..."
Relationships: Bob Dylan/Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm/Robbie Robertson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started as a 10,000 word Bob fic. Ended as a 34,000 word sprawling 18 year-relationship Robbie/Levon angst moment. What can you do. Most of this is Testimony-based, plus the wonderful Last Waltz.
> 
> as always, feedback is not only encouraged, but appreciated! Let's go...

_No regrets, Coyote! We just come from such different sets of circumstance. I'm up all night in the studios, and you're up early on your ranch._

Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1963

They had made it to the morning. 

White walls, white sheets, asleep, next to one another, naked and breathing the same. They had made it to the morning, and the light that slipped around the covered window was cool and downy, and Robbie was half-surprised to wake at all. 

He laid there for many minutes, counting each breath Levon took. The dawn was so still, and blue. Cavernous. Until at last, eyes opened across from his, and cars roared past on the interstate a mile off, and the few gravel-pecking birds sang, and here was another morning to be kissed in. 

“Morning.”

“Hi.” Robbie nestled his head under Levon’s chin. 

“How ya feelin’?”

“We made it.”

“Course we did. How’d you sleep? Sleep alright?” 

Robbie’s stomach growled.

“Sorry.”

“No. S’okay.” Levon smiled at him. “Let’s go get some food.”

And the tenderness of the morning was broken by his hunger, nauseating as it was. 

“Think they’re up yet?” Robbie sat up, trying to push his snarled hair into order. Levon stood, shamelessly bare, stretched, and went digging in his suitcase for fresh clothes. 

“If they ain’t, they're about to be.” 

They started laughing, staring at each other, and Robbie smiled until his cheeks were hot, and he wanted to be loved again. 

“Come back.” Grabbing fingers, for the figure deliciously bent at the foot of the bed. “Come love me.”

“Baby, you need food. After breakfast.” 

“I’m hungry _now_.” A raised eyebrow. “And I need a shower.”

“Ah.” Levon laughed low. “I see. Can’t. Breakfast first, baby. Much as I want that mouth of yours.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Not at all.”

“I want a cigarette.” 

“Smoked ‘em all last night.”

Robbie scrunched up his face in childish disappointment. 

“I’ll get you some, baby. Promised you whatever you wanted, didn’t I?” Levon came and kissed his forehead. “You gettin’ dressed?” 

“Yes.” 

“Get on, then, sweet boy. Let’s go.”

Robbie showered, and they dressed in the same sandy coolness of the morning, rubbing tired eyes and kissing while they stepped into jeans and packed their suitcases. Outside noise grew as the day rose, and within minutes, they were zipping up their cases and tying their shoes. 

Teeth brushed, all the sex combed out of Levon’s hair, and a knock on the door. 

“You ready?” Rick peeked in, saw them shuffling around, so very tired. “Richard’s already got the car running, and Garth’s packing the trailer.” 

“Yeah, we’re finishing. _Duke_ , let’s go.”

Slow to get all his things together, and Levon’s impatience embarrassed him. 

“ _Sore_ -ry. Okay, I’m ready.” 

“Good boy.”

If Rick caught it, he didn’t say anything. All he did was smile at them tiredly and trudge back to the car. 

“There’s a supermarket down the street,” Levon said. “Figured we could go there.”

“Sure, sure,” Robbie said. “We just gotta leave the car running.”

“I’ll wait, how’s that?”

“You just don’t wanna be getting your hands dirty, s’all.”

“It ain’t dirty if it needs to be done.”

“Does that apply to last night, _too_? Look, all I’m saying,” and Robbie held up his hands, “is that it got called off for a reason.” 

Levon rolled his eyes. “You got everything?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Not fucking attached to any of it anyways.”

“That’s the answer.” 

Richard was behind the wheel when they shuffled out into the parking lot. Levon bullied the front seat out of him and told him to squeeze in the back with Rick and Garth. 

“Why’s _Robbie_ always getting the front?” Rick cut in.

“Hey! You’re on my foot, get off my foot!” Richard reached over Garth to slap Rick’s arm. 

“You guys got any cigarettes up there? I’m fucking shaking back here.”

“That’s because you’re hungry and you just _think_ you—”

“How do _you_ know what my business is?”

“How do I _not_? I gotta cram into a fucking room with you every night and hear you fucking snore—”

“I offered you the bed.”

“I’m not fucking sleeping in a bed with you.”

Early, hungry and wanting nicotine and coffee, bickering in their big overcoats. Robbie and Levon started laughing. Garth smiled silently in the center seat, squished and being shouted across. 

Levon started the car and gave Robbie a look. Warm and sweet, mischief at the corners and Robbie smiled back, demure. The rest of the car was too embroiled to notice. 

_Love you._

_Love you, too._

“You okay?” Levon whispered.

“Yes. Just hungry.”

“Alright then, let’s go. Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he shouted until the backseat quieted. “We’re going. Quit your yelling! Can’t barely think a thought.” 

Robbie started giggling, and the sun kept coming up, brighter now. The interstate had rumbled to a roar, cars on the move now. 

They had to ramble, too. After last night. Hadn’t even done a thing wrong. But it was the _intent_ to do wrong, and the whole town was dimmer. Something snapped at their heels until they fled. Robbie didn’t want to sit around anymore; he’d been sitting for fifteen years, kicking around dust and rocks and getting grass stained and bored. 

Sit too long somewhere and you itched all over. The only remedy for restlessness was the road. And he wanted to see all of it. 

The bickering resumed behind them. Garth gave a little sigh, and Robbie kept laughing. The sun shone directly into the front window of the car. 

“You ready, baby?”

“Yes.” 

“Okay. Let’s ramble.”

Brisbane, April 1966

Brisbane was heaven. 

They’d touched down the night before and woken to the glory of the Gold Coast. Alright, so not _exactly_ Brisbane. An hour south of it. But with the late afternoon view off the rooftop deck and pool, Robbie wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

The sun had already begun its meandering descent between the net of buildings at their backs. Over the ocean, the sky was the color of champagne, creamed pink, and everyone around him was swathed in gold. Walking angels. 

Bob had the brightest halo. Light slanted in behind him and made a burning ring around the head. Perhaps, Robbie thought idly, it was just the sprawling hair.

Among the rest of the band, crew, and hangers-on, who were unbuttoned, loose, down to their trunks, Bob looked ridiculous in his striped suit. A grim, sharp-beaked bird, staring out at the happiness around him from behind a black abyss. Even his movements, still for a moment, then jittery in fast twitches, made Robbie think of crows that gathered on fences, or spasmed and flapped on telephone poles.

Someone got a few early Motown records spinning. Robbie remembered ripping it when he was younger, too interested in the Delta to pay attention to Detroit. Now, lying on a towel at the pool’s edge, hands behind his head and body bared to the sun, he wondered if the world had always been this perfect. He didn’t even miss Toronto, out here on the brink of heaven. 

“You look real relaxed,” Bob said quietly. Robbie cracked an eye open. If he sat straight up, he’d be an inch from Bob’s boots. Close enough to kiss them. He smirked at that, and Bob asked what was so funny. 

Robbie hiked himself on his elbows and gave his body a once over. It was hard to tell if he’d gotten any real tan. 

“Hand me that, would you?”

“Huh?” Bob pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. 

“The sunscreen there, right there next to your arm, on the table. Yeah, thank you.” Robbie popped the bottle open and reapplied. “Aren’t you boiling?”

“I don’t like swimming,” Bob said curtly. “Or the beach for that matter. You can't even get a tan at this hour.”

“This isn’t the beach. The beach is down there." Robbie pointed off towards the east.

“Sharp of you,” Bob said and lit a cigarette. “No, I’m fine, thank you. It really isn’t that hot.” 

Robbie wore nothing but briefs. His own sunglasses were up on his head. “Well, I’m almost naked and it’s terrible. Except for the view.”

“The sky’s nice, yes,” Bob answered, but one corner of his mouth tipped up, and Robbie giggled. 

Neuwirth passed with two blondes on his arm, all three just out of the pool. The girls were dripping, and their bikinis clung sheer to their wet bodies. Robbie made a valiant effort of not staring as Neuwirth led them off the deck and back into the hotel. When he looked back to his employer, however, he saw that Bob’s gaze hadn’t wavered and that he’d been staring at Robbie intently the entire time. 

“See,” Robbie cracked a joke, uncomfortable with the stark attention. “Those girls have got the right idea.”

“Go in the pool then. Cool off.” Bob looked out over the water. 

The song turned over to a Ronettes tune, pleading and full of rattle. Robbie stood and took off his shades. “Bet you’d like that. Wouldn’t you?” When he thought no one saw, he grabbed Bob’s ankle and squeezed it warmly. 

“Get in that pool.” Bob jerked and kicked his foot until the hand released. His usual dour expression was unchanged. 

“Look at that ocean!” Robbie exclaimed. “You’re out here and you don’t even like the beach.” Then, struck, he turned, “Oh...so you’re out here because…”

“Get. In. Man, I don’t wanna tell you again. Go.”

Robbie shuffled back a bit, ran, and dove in. Summers on the reservation meant swimming in the Grand River. Racing through the strawberry bushes down to the pebbled strands, and twirling in the gentle eddies. He and his cousins strung a rope from one of the overhanging trees and swung into the water. That little space of lift, airborne, between rope and water, legs kicking through nothing, was one of the best feelings Robbie ever had. 

Bit of shame only pills did it now. 

“How’d you learn to do that?” Bob asked when Robbie resurfaced and gently swam over to the concrete lip. 

“Summers on the reserve. My cousins taught me.” A piece of wet hair fell, and Robbie pushed it back up. “And how to swim...wait!” He started smiling. “You can’t swim, can you?” A single accusatory finger pointed at the bridge of Bob’s glasses. 

“I can swim!” 

“Sure. Sitting there all prim and saying you don’t like swimming. Absolute faker, you are, I call it—”

Then Rick surfaced out of nowhere and yanked Robbie under the water. For a second, they both were just warped shapes below. Bob watched with curiosity, a bit peeved Rick had interrupted, until they broke the water, laughing and spitting and hitting each other playfully. Robbie tried to swim away from Rick, up out of the pool, but he was captured and dunked again. 

This continued for some time. The song changed. The light slanted a bit lower. It had begun to get hazy, sweet smelling. People swarmed past, and for once, somehow, no one was interested in bothering Bob Dylan. He remained alone, watching everything, observing.

“You asshole!” Robbie shouted. He laughed and begged Rick to let him go. Distracted by some brunette beauty swimming close, Rick released his hold. Robbie kicked back to the edge and lifted himself out of the water. 

Bob wanted all of him. 

Broad and glowing in the light, swathed in bronze, glistening. He smiled, bright and enthusiastic, hands on his hips. Reaching high to brush his wet hair back once more. Bob soaked up every plane of skin, every dip and valley and ridge of his torso and arms.

Robbie picked up his towel, shook it out, and dried himself off. When he saw Bob staring, he smirked. 

“Like the show?”

“Eh,” Bob grumbled, and smoked furiously. This only made Robbie smile even more, irresistibly attractive. He draped the towel around his neck. 

“I’m going inside. Gonna shower.” He started off, but Bob caught him. A long nailed hand pinched Robbie’s hip, stroking the damp briefs. 

“Don’t yet, darling”

Robbie glanced furtively around. The music had grown deafening, and people shouted drunkenly over it. Nobody saw. “Huh?” 

Bob stared straight ahead.

“Don’t get clean just yet. Wanna have you. Then you can shower.”

Robbie turned red. He smiled. “You’ll join?”

“Remains to be seen. I’ll see how I'm feeling.”

“Can I go in now?” 

“Sure. Just don’t shower. And don’t change, either.” Bob met his gaze, and for a too-long second they stared at each other in the falling night. Surrounded by the rising glow of torches and neon and spliff haze and sloshed chatter. “Ok, go,” and Bob hit Robbie on the back of his upper thigh. Robbie sprinted off. 

For a long time, Bob sat on the pool chair and watched the scene around him. The sun was gone now, long gone. He waited minutes longer and tried to imagine what Robbie was doing inside, in his room. Pacing? Sitting there? On the bed, in a chair? Touching himself? Or keeping his hands clasped, denying his needs?

A couple of people, out of the multitudes that swayed past him, stopped, shook his hand, tried to make small talk over the rumble. He was gracious with them, took his time. He was being _polite_ , after all. 

Then the interactions petered out, and Bob remained, observing. Robbie’s sunglasses were still on the table next to the ashtray. He’d forgotten them. 

Sighing, Bob stood and folded the glasses up and slipped them in his pocket. Someone patted his arm on the way back inside, muttered a ‘hello’ and he gave a ‘hey, man’ in return. Was he supposed to be this friendly? Was it the weather? The country? One great kingdom of plains and beaches and sun and women? 

Or the boy waiting inside for him? Attentive and pretty and eager?

Distant music played. Drifting wartime tunes. Robbie remembered watching his mom and Jim dance along to old songs like that, wrapped in each other’s arms and swaying, in the late hours when he was supposed to be fast asleep in bed but instead snuck down to watch them through the spindles of the stairs. 

He, too, was now wrapped up in the arms of another. The door was locked, the lights low, and everything else forgotten. Tonight, since no one had come knocking, he figured they were forgotten, too. 

He’d gotten up right after the romp to light a smoke. Gone too long, and Bob had moaned for him to return.

“Gotta take a piss, hold on, my _love_.” He heard dry laughter. Then Robbie had returned to the arms of his man, and kissed him straight into the next day. 

“You can’t stand it without me.” Robbie cradled him and Bob’s hair tickled his chest. 

“Sure, you go on thinking that.”

The clarinet swelled, and a low crawling slither of sax answered. Then a trumpet broke in, sensual and moaning, held up by the steady reliable drumming. Robbie suddenly hurt a lot in many different places.

“Hey, get up for a second, would you?”

“You just got up!” Bob said peevishly, but he rolled off Robbie and sat up. It was dark here, in the room, with only second hand echoes of city light coming through the open window. 

“Yeah, I know. Just lemme…”. Robbie bent over his suitcase and came back to bed with a lit cigar. 

“You’re incredibly ridiculous, you know that?” Bob rubbed his eyes. 

“They’re good.”

“They’re a high sign of insecurity, is what they are.”

“Hey, now!” Robbie sat against the headboard and pulled him close. 

“And you—” Bob dipped a hand below the bedsheet. Slow indulgent strokes to hot length. “—have no reason to be insecure, I don’t think.”

How could this skinny sallow kid from Hibbing, Minnesota, who, externally, seemed so disinterested and sterile and detached, could possess such sexuality? “You’re something else.” 

“You never listened to folk, did you?”

“Nope. Just the blues.” Robbie puffed on the cigar, feeling simultaneously so much older than twenty two but boundlessly young and in love. “But!” and he set the cigar in the ashtray, “as for my first foray into... _folk_ ,” he snagged Bob’s lip between his teeth, “I’m quite enjoying myself.”

“Getting to know a bluesman isn’t so bad, either,” Bob said and held Robbie’s face in his hands. 

“You’ve known many, I’m sure.” 

“Yes, but they’re usually not such charmers. Or so pretty.”

“You’re too nice.”

“I’ve met many,” Bob said, winding kisses up Robbie’s jaw, “But you are my favorite thus far.”

With that, Robbie pulled him down again, low low low, climbing over him, rutting like a dog, kissing and laughing. Here, in this hot room, down under, there was no space for anything else, no other thoughts, no Toronto musings, Southern fever dreams, or the great spacious imaginings of whatever happened off on oil rigs down in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Big Pink, February, 1971 

Mid-day, snow-laden and cloudy, and everyone lay low. 

Rick took Hamlet out to the yard and chased him around through the knee-high white, Richard and Garth fell asleep in the living room, and Robbie put tea on and slunk off to find his lover. 

Levon lay on a mattress, on the floor in the upstairs bedroom, curled up and fast asleep. He breathed so deep and slow that Robbie knelt down and watched his chest. Satisfied, he locked the door, slid in behind Levon under the blanket, and nuzzled at his nape. 

“What are you doing up here, huh?” Reaching a hand to trail a finger along his slack cheek, at the beard line. “Everyone else is sleeping. Too cold to do anything.” 

To prove this, he snuggled in even closer. Levon was burning up along the neck, and Robbie pressed his nose against hot skin. He knew what had happened. 

It didn’t need explaining or sniffing out. This sleep was induced, and sometimes Robbie had to get low, too, like the rest of them, on cold days. But winter didn’t mean anything if you were already there, in it. 

Levon stirred. He stretched, and Robbie felt the tension, taut and shaking, and then, he curled back in on himself. Groggy and blinking awake into the winter afternoon light, numb-tongued and bleary. 

“That you, Duke?”

“Who else? Hello,” Robbie whispered warmly, kissing his neck again. “You’re safe.” He laced his hands over the hull of Levon’s chest. “Sleep good?”

A nod as his answer. Robbie nosed at the soft skin underneath his ear. 

“You shaved. _Finally_.”

“Hey!” 

Levon twisted around to face him, and kissed his chin. “Can see all that beautiful face of yours now.” 

“You didn’t like it before?” Robbie frowned. 

“Something to try. But you look so much younger now and…” he carded his hands through the front fringe of Robbie’s hair, ended up getting stuck on a curl by his temple, twirling it around one finger. “Getting long.”

“Dominique wants me to cut it.”

“But not shave your beard?”

“You both have different tastes, then.”

“Don’t cut it.” 

Robbie kissed his nose. “We’ll see.” He was smiling. Gently, “What were you getting up to, up here?” 

“Sleepin’.”

Robbie cocked an eyebrow. “And I’m Hamlet.” 

“It don’t concern you.”

“It does concern me. You’re my best friend. We’re in this band together, aren’t we? And—” he gave Levon the softest kiss on the lips. “—we got other ties to each other. I love you.” 

“I love you too, baby.” 

“Todd asked me about it.”

“Todd who?” 

“Months ago when we were doing _Stagefright_. Asked me why you all scurry off. I didn't know what to say.”

“He shouldn’t have been so damn nosy about it, then.”

“It embarrassed me.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Like you’re any better, hun.” 

“What one does, stands for all of us.”

“I didn’t know Canada had boy scouts.”

“Oh, shut up.” Robbie kissed him again. With effort, he hauled Levon on top of him, keeping the blanket over them snuggly, sheltered from the storm, warm and close inside. “Touch me.”

Levon stared at him, a bit surprised and still tired-eyed. 

“You heard me. I want you to touch me. Here. Right now.” 

They’d christened many spots in Big Pink in such ways, either alone in the early mornings or late late at night, or at more precarious times, brothers and visitors right around the corner or down the hall. Just asking to get caught, in the most perverse of ways. Thrilled at the possibility. 

Levon touched and rubbed and smoothed flesh, the way his love liked it, until Robbie was undone, half off the mattress, sprawled out, limp and shaking as if taken by possession or spirit. Sweating, flushed. He panted and cried aloud, too loud, but Levon loved it. Asked him to shout even louder, and let the whole house know of what they meant to each other. 

“Tell them. Tell ‘em all. You’re mine, and this is what I do to you, yeah?” 

Robbie gripped the mattress, and bare toes pushed on the wood floor, staving back the approaching end.

“When you’re out there, telling them all what to do and how to be, I wish they could see you like this, baby. The way you are for me right now. Absolutely pathetic like this.”

Robbie whined. 

“Oh, and so gorgeous, too, don’t you forget it, darlin’. C’mon. Come.”

Release faltered, a stuck latch, trapped in the chamber. Robbie’s face was pulled together and delirious with it. Levon watched him fight it.

“C’mon, baby. I asked you. Let go.”

And Robbie did. Shouting out his ecstasy, head all the way back, stuck in the apex of his pleasure. A name approached, and Levon kissed the word out of Robbie’s mouth, swallowing, until Robbie was spent, and they lay there, forehead to forehead, panting. 

“You feel that?”

Hardness against the leg. Hot, insistent. Robbie grinned. There was sweat above his lip, and Levon kissed the philtrum.

“You did that, honey. All for you. You want it?”

“Yes.”

Levon pushed himself up, lightheaded with the effort, and fell onto his back. He spread his legs. 

“Then get on over here, baby. Gimme that pretty mouth of yours.”

So Robbie did, climbing on top of him and kissing his way down a warm body. On the nose, lips, Adam’s apple, top of the shirtline. The biceps. Forearms, over the fresh bruises, pinpoint scars. 

Rested his forehead to this place for a moment, collecting himself and collecting his sadness, saying soft soft prayers over the damaged flesh. His head was pushed lower, urged to move on, and he continued down to parted fly, and the thick heat he wanted in his mouth. 

He got what he wanted so desperately. That, and much more. The way it always was with them. One thing was never enough, and they ended up joining anyways, giving each other all, the only way to truly prove what they meant to each other. 

So many women. Edie, and Carly, and his own wife, and a few men, too, but always coming back to the same person, the first true love. His Levon, blessed Levon, nobody else could compare. It was all Robbie wanted forever. 

Malibu, Spring, 1973:

Just past nine, the phone rang. 

Dominique was out, leaving Robbie with Alexandra and Delphine, the latter of whom had gone to sleep relatively well, but the former had crawled out of her bed, found him in the sparsely furnished living room, unpacking more and more and more boxes.

“I can’t sleep!” She stood on the steps, shuffling her feet. “Can I help?”

Robbie went to her, bent and kissed her forehead. “Can’t sleep, huh? Anything bad?” He sat next to her on the step. 

“No, just not sleepy.” Her hands twisted in her pajama shirt. 

“Ah, them’s the breaks, kid. I haven’t slept in years. I’ve got one more box, then. You wanna help me get the tape off?”

“Just one more?” She skittered over the box and began scratching at the tape with a small hand. 

“Well,” he laughed, “for tonight, anyways. We have lots of stuff, apparently. Boxes for my things and your mom’s and a whole ten boxes for your stuffed animals…”

She giggled. When she’d gotten the tape off, Robbie helped her open the box, full of dishware, but figured it too fragile and heavy, so he carried it into the kitchen and came back to get her. 

He got her to stand on his feet and grab onto his hands. Then he swiveled them both into the dining room. Alex laughed uproariously the whole way. She stopped breathing right around when he plunked her into one of the dining chairs and tickled her until she nearly fell off. 

“Stop!!!”

“No!” He kept tickling her and she laughed so hard the hiccups started. Finally he let up, and asked, “Are you hungry?”

She nodded excitedly.

“Me too.” He went through the empty cabinets. They’d been ordering take-out most nights here; they’d only been in Malibu for a week now. There were some boxes of crackers, chips, beer in the fridge, chicken tikka masala, foil covered lasagna David Geffen had been nice enough to send over. But nothing to feed a four-year old child. Then, Robbie remembered, 

“How about some cookies?” 

Dominique had bought them on a minimal grocery run but insisted they were purely for the adults of the house, because she got hungry when she was drunk, and Robbie wanted them after smoking.

“Yes!” Alex, this time, practically did tumble from her chair, and Robbie had to pat her head and shush her a bit when he set down the plate and a glass of milk in front of her. 

“But don’t tell your sister!” He smiled, sitting across from her and starting in on his own plate of leftovers.

“Are you hungry, too, Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Been unpacking and watching you all day. Haven’t eaten since breakfast. So now—”

The phone rang. 

With a labored sigh, Robbie rose, kissed Alex on the head once more, and answered. 

“Hello?”

“How’s Malibu?” 

It was Bob.

“Hello there,” Robbie said again, smiling. It was just shy of sultry, but said with a smile, and Bob knew it was a joke, a call-back to their earlier days together. “Calling me at this hour...”

“Wanted to say hello. Welcome to the West. Your first night in?”

“Been here a week. Still unpacking. I didn’t know we had so much shit.” Robbie craned into the kitchen to see Alex happily preoccupied with her snack. “How’d you get my number?”

“I know people. Called around a bit, talked to some people, and now I’m calling you.”

“Well,” Robbie said, and leaned even closer into the phone. “Nice to hear your voice.”

“Good to hear yours.” It was smirking and warm. “You didn’t say Malibu was the intended destination.”

“Neither did you, when you and Sara left. You said Southern California. So that could’ve been Santa Monica, Venice Beach, San Diego, Anaheim…” 

“Please, only bums live in Venice.”

“And only tramps live in the Village.”

Bob burst out laughing. Then, “So you on your own now, or are you getting the rest of the band out here?”

In his open ear, Robbie heard Alex whining for more milk. “I’m trying. Calling them every day and begging them.”

“All of them?”

Robbie said nothing. He cast one more glance into the dining room. Alex was shaking her glass at him, so he gave her a ‘one moment’ index finger and a thumbs-up. Then he lowered his voice against the receiver. “Dominique and I had to leave. Big Pink was a mess, we had to get out of there.” 

“I know you did. I know.”

Robbie took his glasses off and started wiping them with his t-shirt. Nervous. “There’s a house in the Canyon that I think would be perfect. For all our recording. Just like Big Pink.”

“And how’d that turn out?”

“Yes, but this time I think, I think it’ll stick. God, those fucking winters would depress anyone. No wonder it turned out the way it did.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Please do,” Robbie said. “I just think they would all like it out here. S’fresh start. For all of us. The girls love the beach.” Alex had gotten up from her chair, came to his side, and was pulling at his pant leg. There was a line of milk smeared above her lip. She grinned and her smile was broken in a few spots where her adult teeth hadn’t yet come in.

“Yes, honey, I know.” He patted her head. “Gimme a second.”

“What?” Bob said. 

“Sorry. I’ve got my kid right now.” 

“Tell her I say hello.” 

Both of Robbie’s girls loved Bob, in the same way Jakob and Jesse loved Robbie and Dominique. 

“Uncle Bob says hi.” Robbie looked down at his daughter. She giggled and held onto his leg even tighter.

“Look, I just wanted to call and say hello, and make sure you were alright.”

“Oh, I’m fine.” 

The poetic, perceptive spirit in Bob knew Robbie was flat behind the phone, sad looking. “You don’t need to lie to me, honey. I want you to do what you want, but I know that bright mind, and know what you’re planning. Want you to be careful.”

“Thank you. I will be. Just give me a few weeks. You know.”

“I do.” 

“You and Sara need to come over soon, as soon as we get the house in order.”

“We’d love that. Better yet, come over ours. Even sooner.”

“Okay,” Robbie said, and wasn’t sure what to say next. “Okay.”

“Okay. Go be with your girl. See you soon, hopefully.”

“Yes! Dinner. Soon as we can.”

“Okay. Good night, Robbie.”

“G’night.” Then, even quieter, “Love you.” 

“Love you, too.” 

And the line clicked dead.


	2. Chapter 2

Malibu, August, 1973

Robbie came down the beach like Adam. 

Levon waited for him at the gate, shielding his eyes against the fiery dusk that bounced off the Pacific. Like someone had struck a match to the dry brush of the hills, the dirt and and set them all alight in a storm of Judgement. 

Delphine was high up in her father’s arms. Then Robbie saw Levon and rushed to embrace him, the child jostled between them. 

“You’re here!”

“Yes, yes, I am.” Below at Robbie’s hip, where Delphine couldn’t see, Levon cradled the waist and beltline in a blissful reunion. 

Robbie had won a successful campaign in getting all the boys out West. He’d suggested, pestered, begged, and finally—after a few rather indecent phone calls with Levon, to remind him of what he was missing in the tangible—got him to sign on. If one cracked, the rest had to follow. 

Robbie set the girl down and sent her inside. Levon had just come through that house. It was bright and full of life and the evidence of children. Snatches of French and laughter between the hired help, and at the door, Dominique had greeted him warmly. If only she knew. 

But a happy place, and Woodstock paled in comparison. 

“You just get in?” 

“Nearly. God, I hate fucking flyin’. Always think those damn things are gonna kill me.”

“They’re death traps.” Robbie led Levon back up through the gate.“Where you staying?”

“A hotel. Libby and Amy are getting in a few weeks from now. We got a house a couple of miles from here.”

“A hotel?” Robbie watched the ocean crash upon the surf. “Don’t be ridiculous. Stay here. We got more than enough rooms.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. Couldn’t impose like that.”

“No, c’mon!” Robbie waved his hand. “Nonsense.”

“Nah, you been good enough. Always letting me stay at Mama Kosh’s place and picking me up and now here, and—”

“Lee. The number of times you took me down home to your parents’ house are uncountable.” Robbie put his foot down. “Lee.Von.” 

“I don’t think,” Levon finally conceded, “I don’t think Dominique appreciates my company too much, and I’d hate to do that to her.”

“Where would you ever get that idea?”

“No, I mean, she’s kind to me, but to be sitting at your table with her, an’...” 

“You were at my wedding, weren’t you? You just about handed me over to her. Not like she can smell it on you. I mean, it’s far better than some of the worries I’m sure she has.” Robbie stared at him, pressuring. 

“I’ll take the couch.”

“Quit it. You’re taking the spare bedroom.”

“That door got a lock on it, then? Been flying all day, don’t want no _disruptions_.”

“If anyone’s keeping you up, it’ll be my babe. I won’t have time to jump you with her wailing. Does it every night. Nearly three now and she still cries so much, and…” he trailed off, transfixed on the ocean again. 

“It’s good to see you.”

Levon smiled. “I’m happy to be here.”

They eyed each other, measuring intentions. What was fashionable these days? Caring too much? Creeping apathy? Yearning disguised as indifference?

“Dinner!” Dominique called from the balcony, Delphine clutching at her legs. Then they both went back inside. 

“C’mon.” Robbie stood. On impulse, unable to resist, Levon kissed him deeply. “After dinner.” Robbie grinned, warm on the cheeks. “Dinner now, we gotta go inside. Then we’ll go for a drive. Okay?”

“In that brand new girl I saw parked out front?”

“Thing runs like a beauty. Hard earned.” Robbie made it halfway through the downstairs door and then pinned Levon against the frame, palms flat on his chest. “From what we _made_.” 

Their creation ran back further than any sired child or wedding band. They got to be the first gods. The first men of things. Drawn up from the old dust of Arkansas and then gone forth into the world. 

“Then you better let me get a seat in her. Lemme drive her.”

“Mmm…” Robbie rocked his head in consideration. “We’ll see. She doesn’t run for _everyone_ , you know.”

“But the men.”

“And ladies.”

“Sure. At times.”

Then Dominique called the meal again, and they unstuck themselves, laughing and falling into each other, held once again to the wrought rhythm of love. 

They went driving after dinner. 

Levon excused himself at the meal’s end, when the help brought out coffee and Delphine fell asleep at the table in her mother’s arms. Robbie went to get the car while Levon took a minute in the bathroom for a piss and to snort a few lines. 

Robbie was waiting for him in the driveway, leaning against the Maserati in the falling dusk. He’d grown into himself, Levon noted, gone from a bit ungainly, awkward, shapeless, clutching for the coattails of Ronnie or Bobby, to some tall, dark beauty, refined in wit and heart and words. Relaxed against his chariot here in Eden, settled into his power quite well, like some West Coast Michael Corleone. Gorgeously sinister. 

“Hey, there,” was all he said, tossing his keys like some jock. Something he’d seen in the movies, and it was a bit cheesy, but Levon thought it was also a bit cute. Oh, and then there was that look in his eyes. Something hungry. 

“Hello,” Levon returned. Robbie grinned. 

“Get in.”

“Where we goin’?”

“For a drive,” Robbie said as they both clambered in. He started her up and got rolling. “Up through the hills. Maybe down to Hollywood. The Boulevard”

“Nobody calls it that,” Levon said.

“I just did.” Robbie smiled to himself and turned right. “It’s real pretty at night, with all the lights and joints lit up.” 

“I know. We’ve been there before.”

“Yes, but I still think it’s pretty.”

“It’s an hour away,” Levon complained. 

“You’ll learn to like it. This might be my only night with you for a while. _Alone_. I want it.”

Malibu was heaven, Levon thought. With her sloping mountains, highway racing directly along the ocean, driving parallel to the edge of the time and creation. Past evening, stars shone above the water: a swimming cosmos, boundless, not even to be struck apart by the cars that passed them and the busy bars on the side of the road, and the sounds of raucous disorder that came through the open windows when they hit a red light.

“You know,” Robbie said absently, and drove the car on. “You know, after you left, we were in Australia, and I thought she was just the best. Absolute—”

“Heaven?” Levon lit a cigarette.

“Yeah…” Robbie half-laughed. “How’d you know I was gonna say that?”

“Because I know you.” Levon started laughing. “You’re my Duke. Duke of Toronto, Earl of Scarbourough Bluffs.”

“Ah, I see what you did there. Hilarious.” 

“I am.” Levon sniffed. “Thank you.”

The coast just kept going and going. Robbie switched lanes and the car zipped under a sign labeled _Los Angeles_. 

“I thought Brisbane was perfect. But I think Malibu’s better.”

“Well, a lot’s changed. You’ve got Dominique, and your daughters, and—”

“You. You came back.”

“Course I did. Going to the Gulf was a fucking mistake. And then you—” He stopped himself. Nervously smoked and tapped ash out the window. He shifted in his seat. “Well, you know.”

Robbie bit his lip. The highway wound suddenly inland, and they faced east. “Welcome to Santa Monica,” he said quietly, distracted. The car rumbled down a tight street. 

“It’s real busy.

They were going slowly enough now to spot the buttons on people’s shirts and the laces of their shoes. Some wore sandals. Others went without any shoes at all, and all the girls were beautiful. 

“Like this every day of the week, no matter the hour.” Robbie already sounded annoyed.

“You been here, what, a month or so? Already cynical, baby?”

“No, I just don’t like traffic.”

“You moved to Los Angeles.”

“Yeah, but we’ve lived in New York City.”

“But there, at least, the traffic moves.”

The cars shuffled forward, and Robbie gave an exasperated sigh. Levon rubbed Robbie’s arm and turned the radio on. 

_When you see me again, I hope that you have been the kind of person that you really are now…_

“Sly…” Robbie hummed, losing some tension. “Mmm. Now, that’s real nice.”

“You like this stuff?” Levon asked. 

“It kicks good,” Robbie said.

“Yeah, their other stuff is great. This one always spooked me. There’s something scary about it.”

“How so?”

“It’s haunting.”

“Never thought of it that way. Thought it was kinda sexy, but haunting?” He trailed off. “You ever wonder if those can be the same thing?”

They picked up speed again on the freeway.

“Nah…” Levon said, and lit another cigarette. He flicked the first out onto the 10. Cars roared along next to them. “They ain’t. One’s a real good feeling and the other’s not.”

The Citroen struck down Sunset. For a split second, the traffic melted away, leaving open a hot strip of the road. Robbie pushed her up to eighty. 

Levon got the passenger side window all the way down. Between the buildings, he tried to spot the glowing white beacon, nine sparkling letters against the hills, a hymn for those who’d made it and an epitaph for those who hadn’t.

He shifted with his forearms braced on the lip of the window, chin resting there and letting the wind blow his hair back. Flashes, lashes, and little exhales of neon flickered past in the heat. All the signs, all lit up. 

Rick Dalton’s new picture. 

Mel’s Drive-In. 

A dirty movie place. 

Groups of teenagers stood around on the sidewalk, smoking and laughing under great washes of blinding pink and fizzing blue. Loud music blared from a little alley, and he heard them all singing along.

_Once upon a time you dressed so fine…_

Did Robbie hear it too? The car floored all way past ninety.

“Cool it there, would you?”

“I can slow down.” 

“Would you go to see that?” Levon pointed to a poster tacked up high above the windows of a corner grocery. 

Robbie edged forward to squint high out the front window. “ _Mean Streets_ …” he said, reading the board. “Hm. Haven’t heard of it. Why you asking?”

Levon scratched at his neck. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” 

Robbie switched lanes again and screeched left. The car’s back end swung into the right lane. Horns honked, and he laughed joyously. Tires squealing, Robbie beaming wide and full of happiness, as the car pitched to and fro and rocked right up out the fluorescent valley, cannoning toward the base of hills. 

They parked the car on the side of the dark road in Beachwood Canyon and made love in the back. 

Quiet, under the eaves of trees and out of the amber street lights, high up in the knotted, twisting hills, where everything was left alone.

Rocking together in the night, half-naked and hard. Sweating, slotted together so beautifully. Robbie straddled Levon, lowered himself down, pressed his nose to a burning hot neck when it got to be too much, and breathed deep. Until, gently, they were completely one. 

“Haven’t had you in months.” He winced. “It’s…” 

“You alright, baby?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Robbie murmured out, and moaned when Levon moved a bit. 

“Shit, you’re tight.”

“I missed you.” Robbie kissed him softly, feeling a bit like the fairer sex, the way boys took their girls in backseats. Arkansas, Turkey Scratch all over again. 

Levon held the small of his back. “I missed you, too...gone too long. No wonder you’re like this.” 

Breathy, over skin, unable to catch enough air. Until it couldn’t be contained, when Levon’s cock hit deep in a tender spot, and Robbie cried out. 

“Yes, baby, c’mon, sing for me.”

A car shot up over the sharp hill, and gave Robbie a faceful of headlights, no longer hidden, his mouth stretched open in pleasure, eyes shut against the glare and from the way he felt about to break in two. 

“Shit. Hurts a bit.”

“Sorry.”

“No, keep going. I like it.” 

“You like it? Like feeling this full?”

“ _Yes._ ” 

“Like being fucked like a desperate slut?”

“ _Yes!_ ” 

Robbie’s head fell back against the passenger seat. Levon bit his neck. He yanked Robbie’s hips down even harder. They were as close as they could be, but it wasn’t enough. Never would be. Never could truly become one: a singular entity, the same, the way they felt they completed each other. Never enough. Never. 

Ruthless, unrelenting, the way Levon slammed into him, and ignored his mewls of pain. He fucked right through it, and something about being taken so cruelly, so quickly, too, no breath between loving and fucking, cramped up in a car and a hot night, like being shoved under the heat of the Earth. 

“Love you. Love you, love you…” 

“So gorgeous like this, baby. Love you, too.”

Then Levon was spent, deep inside what he loved so dearly, and Robbie followed him over the edge with a yell, swept away in ecstasy. 

Nothing to do after but lay against each other in the silent dark and find their strength again. More cars passed, but they were low, below the window, kissing softly. Kicking around, not wanting to go home. 

“You’re staying tonight,” Robbie said quietly. He kissed Levon’s cheek, and then pressed his forehead to the spot. “As long as you need, until you get it all settled with Libby.”

“Duke, you wore me down.”

“I’ll make you pancakes tomorrow. Alex likes them, too.”

“Don’t need to sell it. Your ass is incentive enough.”

“S’all I am to you?”

“No,” Levon said and stroked his hair. “But I ain’t complaining it’s another part of knowing you.”

“I think we know each other better than most,” Robbie said. He sat up and buttoned his jeans. Levon got up, too, laughing. 

“Want any?” He dug a vial out of his jacket pocket, and Robbie took it to his nose and sniffed. “Does Dominique know you go out driving with that in you?”

“She drives drunk. S’long as somebody’s home with the children…” They got out, and got back in the front seats. “They’re probably already asleep, but if Delphine wakes up in the night, I gotta deal with it. She has these horrible nightmares. Feel bad for her. She really does like you, you know.”

“Bring her in to me. We can read her a book.”

“Don’t make me fall in love with you again.”

“I got a kid of my own. I ain’t totally clueless about ‘em.”

Robbie pulled the car out onto the road, and sent them back down the hills toward the freeway. 

“In another life,” Levon mused, watching the lights of Hollywood Boulevard go past, “We’d have a house and kids of our own, and none of this bullshit.”

“What world are you in? Gettin' us killed doing that.” Robbie laughed nervously. “Thought you liked the road.”

“I do. Like Libby and Amy, and making music. But I’m talkin’ some other lifetime, and just you and me.” 

Robbie said nothing at first, taken aback at the uncharacteristic sweetness. Then he leaned into it, and said, “I’d like that a lot. Just you and me, and some kids.”

“Like what my momma and daddy had.”

“Better than mine.”

And then nobody said anything at all, quiet and trying to figure out what about this life made them long for a different one. 

Los Angeles, November 1973

In late November, Dominique left for Montreal with the children. Robbie arranged to head up there in time for the holidays.

“It’s too much,” she insisted one morning while packing. Hair tied back, but coming loose, leaving her frazzled-looking. Delphine was aloft in Robbie’s arms, clinging to his neck while he trailed his wife around the house. “You are so busy, and I know we have the help and you are so good with girls.” She paused to kiss him on the lips, then went back to vigorously folding the children’s shirts and sweaters. “But California is so _different_ than I have expected. I need a break, to see _maman et papa_ , and you will come later, yes?”

“Yes,” Robbie said. Delphine pushed her small nose into his rough cheek, and he smiled. Then Alex came running through the room, and Delphine, intrigued and wanting to join the fun her sister was having, squealed and wriggled until Robbie set her down. As they both careened into the hall on tiny toes and twinkling notes of high laughter, it was too much for Dominique. She chided them sharply in French. Robbie didn’t understand, but his daughters did, and for a moment he felt shut out. 

“Yes?” 

“Yes, yes.” He came to kiss her again. 

She and the girls left two days after that, and Robbie was quite alone. 

He called Levon. 

“Dominique’s gone.”

“She finally had it with your ass?” he laughed gruffly into the phone. 

“Nah, she just needs a break. Took the girls.” Robbie lay on the couch, bare feet propped up, joint between his fingers. “And I am _relaxing_. She might be sick of my ass, but I don’t think _you_ are.”

“Well…” It was always a battle between those Arkansas manners and his own lewd interests. “Well, what are you sayin’ there, Duke?”

“Libby there yet?”

It had proved difficult to get her and Levon’s little girl out West. Levon claimed she was dragging her feet. Robbie had to wonder about what. Levon said it was the ‘change of pace’, but Robbie was unsure if the _location_ had anything to do with it.

“Nah, you know the drill,” Levon said. “She keeps saying after the new year.” 

“Come over then,” Robbie said. He lowered himself all the way down on the couch. “Stay a few weeks. I could use the company.”

“You ain’t gonna force me to do no fuckin’ work are you? ‘Cause I’ve had enough of your bullshit about that ‘n—”

“ _No_.” Robbie rolled his eyes. “Might force you to do some fucking, but no work. Shit, I need a break, too, alright? I’m tired all the time and…” 

“ _You’re_ tired? Working the rest of us to death?” 

“I got two demons and I can’t understand what’s being said half the time, and...just come over.”

“Tonight?”

“Soon as you can, that’s all.”

Levon moved in the next morning. 

It was an idyllic season. Their last, although neither knew it at the time. 

Malibu ran a strong streak of hot days, even in late fall, and they laid around outside by the pool and on the beach. Drinking warm beer and kissing and swimming in the surf.

Robbie strut around in his swimming briefs and unbuttoned chambray shirts, sandals on his feet and sunglasses shoved up into his long hair, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, and whenever he would pass Levon, on the poolside chairs, in the kitchen, the living room sofa, he’d kiss him happily. 

For a good while, Robbie forgot his wife, and they both forgot their daughters, three among them. They outlawed work, as difficult as it was, and pretended for a long few weeks that this was life. How it always was and would be, and that they had no one to answer to but each other. 

They napped and slept late. Lounged around, watched television and went for indulgent Canyon drives. Robbie proved a good cook, taking after Mama Kosh, and the only thing better than the food were their nights together, and how had they never been this happy, alone? 

Nobody, not the boys or Bob or David Geffen or any other nuisance, asked after them. Perfect silence. Dominique would call some evenings before dinner, when it was already a Montreal bedtime for his daughters, and Robbie would say sweet goodnights to them while Levon watched him fondly from the couch. 

Then they went back to forgetting. 

One afternoon, they laid on the sofa, watching television and touching each other. 

“Could you?” Levon breathed, and gently shoved Robbie’s head in the direction of his waist. So Robbie got his face between Levon’s legs and sucked him lazily. 

“I remember the first time you did that,” Levon whispered. Robbie thought it was an interesting time to be sentimental. 

“You do?” He kissed the shaft. 

“Yeah, we were down home. Playing that game.”

“I remember, too.” Robbie laughed, then fit both balls into his mouth. Levon’s bare feet scrabbled at his back. “S’all I’ve done since.”

“That’s not true, baby. You’re a good fuck, too.”

Earlier that day, in from a morning of sunbathing, hot and shedding their clothes on the kitchen floor. Robbie bent over, biting his own arm, muffling pretty noises, until Levon yanked his hair and told him not to keep so quiet.

“Yeah, but seems like we’re always doing this.”

Levon stretched into Robbie’s movements. 

“Is that when you knew?”

Robbie pulled off so he could speak. “Knew what?” 

“That you liked, you know…” Levon licked his lips, “liked something other than women.”

Robbie frowned. “Hm, no,” he answered after a long beat.

“You knew before?”

“No, I meant I don’t think I do.”

“Don’t know?”

“Don’t like men.”

“No?”

“I mean, I like you and I like doing this stuff with you, but…” Robbie gripped the base and hit the wet head on his tongue. “Do you?” 

“Don’t know,” Levon said, and pinched Robbie’s chin affectionately. “I like you.”

“Then that’s all that matters, yeah?” Robbie licked over and over again. 

“Yeah, I suppose.” Levon swiped Robbie’s wet bottom lip with a thumb, and Robbie gently bit the pad of his finger. “Jesus Christ.”

Robbie smiled proudly. 

“It was real fun,” he added, after a time. Still on his side, he drifted into his own thoughts. Watching the movie, mouth stuffed full, not even thinking of them as separate things to do. 

_An incredibly hot night, sharing a small bed, new and excited, playing that old game of truth or dare, delighted. Dares became increasingly brave. They shed their clothes, tentatively kissed, wide eyed, hearts running fast, pounding in their ears. Giggling and in disbelief of their courage._

_Then,_

_“You can, um,” Levon smiled, and in the moonlight spilling in the open window, Arkansas silver, Robbie thought he was the prettiest thing in existence. “You can touch it if you want.”_

_“Can I…” and eventually, gently, Robbie lowered his mouth, too, and then they were past the point of no return. It had been written, and although miles from being joined, they belonged to each other then. For as long as it was deemed._

They caught the day just as it was falling away. 

At dusk, they trailed down the back wooden steps to the private beach. They carried a big towel and a case of beer and in a canister in Robbie’s pocket were a few freshly rolled joints. 

They set the towel down and took off their shoes and leaned together and watched the setting sun and smoked and drank in silence. Until, 

“I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Do what?” Levon cracked another beer.

“Tour,” Robbie said, and turned to look at him with a straight face. 

“You don’t wanna tour anymore? Shit, we’re only getting started.”

“That’s what’s got me thinking.”

“So you don’t wanna promote _Moondog_?”

“God, no,” Robbie laughed and had Levon pass him the half-smoked joint. 

“I thought we weren’t, uh, discussin’ work.”

Robbie’s face fell. “Yes, you’re right,” sounding a bit sheepish with himself, “We aren’t.” His gaze returned to the ocean. Something suddenly cold about him. Then, apparently, neither willing to pick some other avenue of discussion, he continued, “S’just that I’m getting kinda tired of it.” 

“We hardly tour. I mean, we had the gig this summer, but—”

“Yes, I know. But there’s already talks about doing something with Bob—”

“ _Bob_ ,” Levon said disdainfully.

“Alex and Delphine are only gonna get older and I already work so much, and I don’t wanna miss any more of them than I already do.”

“Then why ain’t you up in Montreal with Dominique?”

Robbie completely ignored him. “Dominique already gets kinda nervous,” he waggled his hand, “when we’re out on the road.”

“She doesn’t trust you?”

“I’ve never slept with any other girl than her. Since we got married,” he added. Levon snorted. 

“I don’t think it’s the road she needs to worry about. It’s her own bed.” 

“Touring,” Robbie continued pointedly, “has been good to neither of us. Any of us. That’s what has her worried. Us getting hurt.”

“You don’t think I miss Amy? We all got things we’re missing.”

“Libby say anything more about it?”

“Since I been here with you?” Levon shook his head. “Nah, she ain’t called in a few days. You know, I really like the way Dominique calls you. That’s nice.”

“What, every night, you mean?”

“Yeah. I ain’t got a clue how my baby girl is doing. That hurts sometimes.”

Robbie bit his tongue so as not to interject with the thought that Levon had had plenty opportunities to put his family first and had failed to do so. “You could always call.”

“Oh, but then Libby will say I’m bothering her and I’d call at the wrong time, no doubt, and she won’t wake the baby for that an'—” 

The excuses got increasingly pathetic and half-mumbled until he ran out of steam and went silent. 

“So you really want to call it quits?” He dug his toes into the sand, dragging a mantle up and grinding the coarseness into the thin skin on the top of his foot. “Really wanna cash in the dream?”

“Never said it was _over_. Just a different way of doing things. A…” Robbie grasped for the word. Far out, a uniform line of seagulls sailed over the waves, black outlines over an orange sun, and Robbie envied their weightlessness. “A...more certain way of doing things.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“A more assured way.”

“Duke.”

“A safer way.”

“There it is!”

Robbie knew he’d lost the floor for the evening. It was just a matter of funneling the conversation out, and then picking up later on with the same talking points. They may not have agreed on the subject, but they agreed on the disagreement and were determined to play it out to repeated nauseating capacity. 

“There it is! That’s what it is.” Levon kept pushing the sand around. 

“But don’t you agree? Don’t you think it’d be so much better that way? If we just stuck to recording?” When he saw Levon was refusing to budge, he added, “A gig here and there! Sure. But not the _road_.”

“What I think is that you like to stick your nose where it don’t belong and make everyone else’s business _your_ business. You spent your whole damn childhood getting your way and you can’t deal when it don’t go that way now.”

“Well, now that’s just—”

“I _appreciate_ the concern, I do. But…” He lit a cigarette, and squeezed Robbie’s hand. They couldn’t even argue properly, sometimes, Robbie thought. Affection kept getting in the way. “Just don’t worry about it.”

“Lee.”

“Don’t worry about it, baby! No, no, no….” They were flitting admonishments, gentle ones, like he was trying to put him at ease. “Hush up. Honey, hush up.” Levon kissed him. Robbie’s free hand, involuntarily, raised to prod at Levon’s inner forearm. 

“Stop. _Stop_ ,” and Levon shoved him back. “Stop it.”

“You _stop_.” Robbie meant it in a far different way. It swung perilously close to honesty, and to maintain their paradise, their late November heaven, Levon suddenly mellowed, let Robbie sink against him, and kissed him deeply. 

The silence ran its course, punctuated by the sounds of their togetherness, soft laughter, snipping teeth, wet smiles, until Levon felt Robbie fully relax. They separated, but Robbie still hugged him tight, and Levon reached up to stroke his hair and neck. 

“Don’t worry about it, okay?” he whispered. He felt Robbie shake his head. “Okay. Good to hear it. I hear you, hear what you’re saying, and I’m listenin’, but I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Okay?”

“Mm-hm.” Robbie hugged him even closer. Determined to keep weight against him, a vicious hold on his frame, a shoulder to bury his face into, shamed and scared. “I’m sorry.” It was muffled. His lips tickled Levon’s shoulder, along with warm flitting breath.

“S’alright, honey. I know you’re worried n’ that you got your girls and all the shit we do, an’,” he stuttered a bit on the “and”, tender and sorry himself and also furious with the clutching sad thing that was now wrapped in his arms. “An’ you’re doing the best you can, we all are.”

The silence stretched out and out. A breeze kicked up off the water, warm. It flicked a few strands of hair over Robbie’s eyes. He curled it behind his ears and then rubbed Levon’s thigh. 

“Whatever happened to Connie?” 

“Hm? Oh, Connie,” and Levon laughed. “Hell, I don’t know what happened to our Connie B. Ain’t talked to her in a while.” 

“Shame.”

“Indeed.” 

Robbie stood up and went down to the water. He dipped a toe in and then turned, alight. “C’mon, we’re going in.”

“You ain’t going swimming in your jeans. We didn’t bring any suits down...Oh,” and he saw the slight wink to Robbie’s expression, and started laughing. “Oh, so you planned this, didn’t you, Duke?”

“A bit.” Robbie came back up to the towel, already undressing. “The water’s great.” 

Levon watched Robbie take his clothes off. 

“You’re coming in, too,” Robbie prompted, and Levon caught his hand. He kissed the bones and bowed his forehead to the wrist. A strange benediction. “What are you doing?”

“Just watching you.”

“Watching me?” Robbie laughed nervously. Tall weeds were here, stickiness and things that lingered in the grass. He’d offered mirth and received some sort of observance. Wasn’t supposed to be so heavy. “‘S’just going swimming.”

“But,” Levon raised his head, and his eyes were so clear. “Just...still...for a second. Just be still.’

Robbie stood there and let himself be appraised. He curled his toes into the sand. He reached a foot up to scrub at his calf. Backwards, taken, and nervous. Levon wouldn’t look away from him, first to his eyes and sternum, and navel, and lower still, even lower, gaze slipping in at his hips. Then he lunged forward and kissed Robbie’s shins. 

“Who made you, baby?”

“What?” 

“Who made you like that? So fucking pretty…”

They collapsed atop the towel, twining together, and together again, pulling off Levon’s clothes, ripping and tearing, until Robbie got the bare skin he wanted and kissed with abandon. Everywhere. 

“Jesus Christ, ain’t you got neighbors?”

“It’s dark out, no, no, dark out,” and Robbie was kissing his mouth now, “And most of ‘em are gayer than this, they don’t care.” 

Levon burst out laughing. He pushed Robbie off of him. “God, I love you.”

Robbie grinned and then was up and racing toward the water. At the edge of night now, the final streams of dusk. Up above the sky was brilliant pink, warm and milky, like whatever home was, and Levon chased after him into the surf. 

“You’re burnt.” 

Levon sat on the bed, and Robbie stood behind him. 

“Doesn’t that hurt?” He trailed a finger over Levon’s red shoulder blades. Then he held his shoulder gently. “Oh, baby, you are _burnt_.” 

“Course it hurts.”

“Just sit there, don’t move.” Sounds of the tap and the medicine cabinet from the bathroom, the attentive murmur of his lover. “You put on sunblock, eh?” 

“Yes.”

“Well, clearly,” and he was back, setting a few bottles on the nightstand, “You didn’t put on enough. Oh, it’s okay.” He was soft about all of it, nettled. “We’ll fix it right up.”

Levon craned to see, but even movement hurt, and Robbie steadied him. “I told you not to move. It’ll hurt less then. Here, some witch hazel.”

Coolness came in padded swathes over his back and hands kneaded at the little point below his neck. 

“And some cream.”

More smooth cold, and Robbie hummed to himself as he worked. 

“We won’t be going out for a few days, I see. How’d you even do this?” 

If Levon could’ve turned around, he would’ve seen Robbie, brows knit and tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth. Genuine concern when nobody was watching. Soft, so light. No attempt at masculine disinterest or gruff dismissal or posturing, as the presence of others sometimes warranted. 

“Here.” Robbie gave him a final loving little tap, and handed him a few pills and a glass of water. “Drink up.”

“Can’t we just—”

“Three Advil, a glass of water, and a good night’s rest. Which, I’m guessing, you haven’t had in a long time. Shush.” 

And Levon, compelled by the abrasive concern, did as he was told. 

“You’re good at this.” 

“Got two little girls and a lot skinned knees and falling down cause they run too fast.” Robbie rolled his eyes with a small smile. “You’re in good hands.” 

Levon smiled, too, head bowed, and then quietly, so quietly, he slumped. Robbie noticed immediately and sat beside him. 

“I miss my little girl.”

“Oh. Oh, I know,” Robbie said. “She misses you, too, I’m sure.”

“She doesn’t fucking know who I am.”

“Of course she does.” Robbie stroked his face. 

“I just want to be good to her.” He looked at Robbie with sincerity. “I had a good daddy and I want to give her a good life, too, like I got. And sometimes, you know, I see us all, and worry that ain’t gonna happen. But—” he added, anticipating the criticism, “—it’s just so hard sometimes, you know? And I ain’t got nothing else. This is it, Duke. So that’s what you do, and that’s your day.”

“I know, I know,” Robbie whispered. “But if you’re worried, you’re doing just fine. Cause people who don’t care don’t do a good job at anything. Understand?”

“I ain’t doing shit.”

“Lee.”

“How are you so good to them? How? We’re the same.”

“Did I say you weren’t good to Amy?”

“I’m never home! Libby won’t come out here! Poor thing’s caught in the middle.”

“Hey, there are plenty of homes with fathers in them that are shit. Jim lived with Mom for fifteen years. What did that get me? What did that get either of us? Me _or_ Mom? Levon,” Robbie said, with focus, and sat to face him on the bed. “When you go home to Woodstock for Christmas, sit Libby down and figure it all out. It would mean a lot if you told her you miss Amy.”

“Then she’ll just say I’m never in New York, and if I care so much, why am I here, and not there?”

“Well, why aren’t you?” 

Levon just _stared at him_. Unflinching. Stared until Robbie came to understand. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Why do you think I came back to Woodstock? Sure as hell wasn’t the country or Richard or anybody like that.” He touched Robbie’s knee. “So you understand, then, why I can’t just lay it down too easy and clear for Libby?”

“Dominique’s in Montreal. I could’ve gone up with her and the girls.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Robbie said. He stood and grabbed the bottles and the now empty water glass and carried it all back to the bathroom. “No, I did not.” 

Levon looked at his feet against the wooden floor. Robbie’s voice echoed off the tile. 

“I stayed here and called you and we’ve made a real fine time of it, yeah? Hey, you brush your teeth?” 

“Yeah.”

“Okay, be right out.” The tap ran again, and then the foaming sound of brushing teeth. Spitting, tap, and through a mouthful of toothbrush and foam, Robbie said, “The Advil kick in yet?” 

“Yeah, kinda. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

They were both determined to speak of other things now. Late quiet: waves that hit the shore, through the open window, the smell of salt and brush, bare feet on tile, rough skin to polish. The white sheets were at once coarse and soft under Levon’s hand, and he smoothed his palm over the bed.

Robbie returned, swiping his mouth. 

“Tired?”

“Got some sun, of course I’m tired.”

“You can say that again. I’m sleepy,” Robbie said, and laid down on his side of the bed. “You can’t lay on your back.”

Levon turned the light off and Robbie turned out his, and Levon had to wonder if this was life every night for him. If this was what union felt like. And why couldn’t he have something so easy with Libby, and why, why, couldn’t he and Robbie have something like this together? Permanently. 

“Guess then,” Robbie whispered happily, “You’ll just have to spoon me. C’mere,” and he held out a hand.

So Levon lay and pulled Robbie against his chest. The hand reached back and took his, then guided it back over the both of them. 

“Your whole body is so warm.” Mumbled, on the edge of sleep with a little curl of a smile. 

Levon said nothing. He ached, tired and sun-drenched. Where Robbie’s mind seemed to have quieted down, his own ran frantic circles. Some people had such an easy time existing. Things didn’t really bother them, and the soul didn’t linger on things long past. They just went out into the world and did. 

And so, long after Robbie had fallen asleep and breathed deep, still, Levon lay awake and held him in his arms, staring at a little point on the far wall, and wondering if mornings were always guaranteed after such deep dark nights.

New York City, November 1965

Robbie waved at him through the cab window. Rain puddled and warped the glass; Levon could hardly see him. But he waved back, kept waving, waving still, even after the cab turned a corner, waving still.

All his stuff was crammed into one suitcase and a small road bag. At the bus station, he got each bag on either side of him on the cold slatted bench under the little plastic overhang. 

New York, New York to Forrest City, Arkansas. Thirty-eight hours on the road. Then forty-five minutes home. Linda, his older sister, would come get him. 

_Make it here, then you can make it anywhere._

And Levon was leaving, going home. 

Home to Dixie, driving down. Retreating. 

Outside the big bus windows, the city broke into little drops from the rain, tiny circled stars, warped skyline, like Robbie’s face through the back window. 

Levon tried to imagine the future that continued after the cab turned the corner. Robbie trudging back to the Irving. Alone. Did he call anybody up? Were _they_ together now?

Together. Naked. Pillow talk, telling secrets. Fucking. Falling in love.

And here he was on a bus going home because he couldn’t handle not getting his way. Couldn’t share. 

The city slipped away, and the bus grew dark as they rolled west into New Jersey, swallowed up by forests and highway and broad land. Bedding down into America.

Levon stuffed up his jacket into a makeshift pillow and propped it up under his head. 

_You’re his entertainment, baby. Don’t you see? As loyal as Neuwirth or all those other crazies. They’re zealots, and he’s a freak and finally, finally, somebody cares about him and thinks it’s Genius and he eats it up. Lick the shit off his boots, suck his cock, I don’t care, I don’t care i don’t careidon’tcareidon’t—_

Too sad to even sob properly. He didn’t even tear up. Just felt like he was standing in that Turkey Scratch field, Robbie running off, joining hands with another, because it was fun, they were just playing a game, and Levon’s shouting “Wait for me! Can’t run that fast!” but then the field’s empty and he trudges home alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> minor tw here: Robbie is 17 in this chapter, and Levon is 19. Just putting the age difference here as a heads up

Arkansas, June, 1960: 

Robbie had gone down to Turkey Scratch a few times with Levon to visit Levon’s family. 

Turkey Scratch was flat and bland and depressing in every season but the summer. Then it was flat and green and hot. But Levon made it fun. From the driver’s seat, he’d point out buildings and the occasional low house, and tell some wacky story, quick joke, or bawdy tale of whatever happened to him when out of his parents’ sight. 

Robbie would laugh and lean out the window into the hot day and try to imagine Levon in these fields, from years before, when he was _Lavon_. A time before they’d fatefully collided. 

“I looked at a map once,” Robbie said. June, seven in the evening, and the car crossed the little “Marvel, Arkansas” sign. “At the distance between here and Toronto.”

Levon started laughing. “An’ how far we apart, baby?” 

“Well, if we met halfway, it’d be Indianapolis, I think. Really far. Nearly 2,000 miles.” 

“So you’re saying we’re more of an Indiana band, if we had to split the difference?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” 

An old barn flew past. 

“You ever been in that barn?” Robbie asked. 

“Yeah! First time a girl ever blew me.”

“You’re kidding.” Robbie looked in awe. Then he saw Levon’s smile grow wider. “Aw, you’re just pulling my leg.’

“Indeed I am. But you gotta have a little fun with it.”

“So if that’s where a _girl_ first—”

“Ah,” Levon interrupted. A hand snuck up to rub the base of Robbie’s neck. “Not telling you that, darling.” 

Robbie looked upset, pouting, until Levon said, 

“That’s for tomorrow. I’m gonna take you out and show the real side of this town.”

Salaciously, Robbie laughed, and sometimes Levon forgot how _new_ he was to all of this. To the road. His whole life was still a dawn. It was a good reminder to tread well with him, then. Levon had decided it was a responsibility. Aside from such trials of the road, Robbie had so many other things to learn. 

The house came up out of the grainy green dusk. Lights shown from all the windows, and a young man stood on the porch. When he saw the car, he dashed inside and then dashed back out, shouting and waving his arms. 

“Wheeler!” 

Car parked, and they both clambered out, Levon already calling for his kin. 

Levon hugged his little brother, and then Diamond and Nell were there, hugging their son and hugging Robbie like he was a son of theirs, too. 

Modena and Linda met them at the door. And it didn’t stop, that storm of sweet love.

Robbie had immediately liked it. Toronto meant business, back-breaking as any of the American northeastern cities: New York, Newark, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. Robbie appreciated her hand in his life. But down here, things were different, a bit warmer, and nobody was in any rush to get anywhere, living life before it grabbed you and lived _you_. This place had fathered Levon: a man Robbie cared too much for. Gave him emotions he’d never had before and ferocious love he hadn’t known could even be felt. 

The procession jostled inside. It was not Robbie’s first visit, but it wouldn't have mattered if it were. They had treated him like family the second they met him, when he was still awkward around them, and even ditzier around their southern son. Just wanting to impress their prodigy. Wanting to measure up and measure well with his love.

The house was lit, and the dinner table was piled high with food. 

Immediately, they all sat and dug in, and in between, took long pauses to bombard Robbie and their child with questions. 

“What’s the road like this go round?”

“How’s Ronnie doing?”

“What were y’all’s dates these past few months?” 

Nell asked after Dolly, despite the fact that the two mothers had never met in person, and Wheeler remained fascinated, as always, with the concept of Robbie hailing from a city. He asked if Toronto was still cold, and laughing, Robbie said yes, it was still cold. Then Nell shoved more greens at Robbie, and he ate up. 

They retired at ten. Levon protested, but his father said that their guest looked dead on his feet; a full day could be had in the morning. Robbie was about to pass out at the table but had been too polite to say anything. Levon hauled Robbie to his feet and helped him back to the bedroom.

An excuse to touch his love. To hold him close. 

“Lavon only got one bed!” Nell called after them. “Hope you don’t mind, Robbie.”

They’d done this before. She always asked and Robbie always answered,

“Don’t mind in the slightest. Thank you very much, Mrs. Helm.”

And, boy, he didn’t mind at all. 

The next day found them alone in the woods by the creek. 

Barefoot and pant legs rolled up, sweating, traversing down the wind of the water, stepping from stone to stone.

Robbie’s foot slipped, and he nearly fell into the creek before Levon rushed to grab him. They laughed gloriously and Levon accused him of purposefully slipping. Robbie insisted it was an accident. Then Levon’s mouth was on his. Firmly, delving, kissing away any excuses. 

“I’m thinking of growin’ a beard,” he said. They walked through a lush dell, carrying their shoes and already burning in the daylight. Far off, the dell petered out into a flat open field, green and ringed with trees. 

“Ronnie’ll kill you.”

“Ah, he ain’t gonna whack his biggest money maker.” Levon gave Robbie one of those glinting smiles. Robbie grinned back, flustered. 

“He’ll do it if you cover it up. It’ll make you look way older.”

“I am old!” Levon protested. 

“Nah,” Robbie held out both arms to steady himself as they navigated a daring patch of roots. “You’re only nineteen. That’s not old.”

“Older than _you_.” He reached the bottom of the hill first, and held out his hand to help Robbie down. It wasn’t needed, but it was tender attentiveness. Like helping a dame out of a car. Maybe it should’ve insulted him. Robbie kinda liked it. 

“I’m eighteen!” Robbie said. “That’s only two years apart.” 

“You ain’t _eighteen_ yet. You’re still a boy.”

“I’ll be eighteen in less than a month!” 

They stopped at the mouth of the field. Far from the dirt roads or houses or prying eyes. Alone. The endless meadow, covered in a boundless blue sky, gave the impression that this was the entire world. A little pocket of heaven, arrested in time, and that it belonged to them and only them. 

Robbie reached through the stark summer light to cradle Levon’s cheek. “I’d miss your face. Don’t cover it up. Boys don’t grow beards.”

“Ah!” Levon yelled, “I’ve had it with you!” and before Robbie could do anything, he was picked up and tossed over Levon’s shoulder. All skinny six feet of him. “Giving me sass and tellin’ me what to do! You ain’t my boss, Mister Robertson, you got that?”

Robbie couldn’t speak, he was laughing so hard. He swayed, slung up high, and the ground was a jostled reel of green stems and wildflowers. His hands scrabbled for Levon’s pant leg. 

“You got that?” And Levon tickled him until he shrieked with happy laughter, nearly kicking Levon in the face, and breathlessly, panting, said yes, yes! he understood. 

He was set down in the middle of the field, gently, on his back. Against the blazing sun, Levon was a dark mass, high above. Robbie, on his elbows, was still panting and laughing. 

Then, the dark mass closed in atop of him, nudging a knee between his legs. He saw the huge smile Levon wore in his honor, and they kissed. 

“Is this real?” Robbie asked. Levon slid a hand low, past Robbie’s belt, massaging him through denim. He laced his hands around Levon’s neck. “S’real? You real?” 

“I’m real, baby.”

“You real?”

“Yes,” and Robbie was being kissed again. Then the hand opened his jeans and slipped underneath fabric and elastic, and he moaned. 

Levon laughed against his neck, and bit his ear.

“No, you aren't.” Robbie’s breath broke. Hitched a bit. “This ain't real.”

“Already talking like me,” Levon huffed. Robbie felt a hot smile form against his jugular.

“I’m trying it out. God, that feels good.” He closed his eyes, basked in the heat and attention. How could this be real? A summer day of paradise, spread on his back, kissed by the most wondrous thing he’d ever met. Loved by somebody. 

“I’m a bad influence, then, honey. You ain’t no Arkansas boy.” Then, he mimicked, “About. Robbie wants to know what this is all ab _out_ , says the best thing ever was getting _out_ of Toronto…” 

“Stop!” Robbie giggled. Levon slid down his body. “Stop saying that. That’s the only thing you Americans say about it and—”

“I’m _Southern_.”

Robbie had stopped listening. He hissed when the hand drew him out his pants. Then nothing happened.

“Should I?” Levon stared up at him. “Look at those wide eyes…” He smiled. “Look at those big scared eyes. You scared, baby?”

“No.”

“Cause we’re out here alone, nobody around. You should be scared.”

Robbie blanched. “Why?” 

“Because…” Levon kissed just below his bottom rib. “Because I could just eat you alive. Could finally _take_ you. Could finally make you mine.”

Robbie’s eyes grew even bigger. “You mean…”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“I been waitin’. But we were always on the road and doing this and that. But now….” he kissed Robbie’s stomach. “Now we ain’t on no road or sharing rooms or doing this or that. Ronnie ain’t here, the band ain’t, we’re alone an’...”

Robbie nodded his head frantically. “I want to. I want to so bad. But...”

“But what?” 

Robbie groaned, inhibited by his own shame. He scrunched up his face, then cracked open one dark eye. Quietly, 

“I’m scared.”

“You never…”

Robbie shook his head. “I mean, I’ve had pussy and stuff, but…” He drew a forearm over his eyes, partially to block the sun and partially to hide. 

“We don’t have to right now,” Levon said. “We can wait.”

“Really?”

“Of course, baby. Yes.” Levon bit the little jut of his hip bone. 

Robbie’s expression was hard to read. “Tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“I want you.”

“Sure, if that’s what my baby wants.”

“Yes, I want it.”

“You sure?” 

“Yes.”

“You just sayin’ that because you want me sucking your cock?” 

“No!” Robbie’s brows knit together as if he were on the verge of tears. Levon thought he was beautiful. “No! I wanna.”

“You sure?” Levon kissed the innermost delta where leg met torso. 

“Just fucking blow me.”

“ _Jaime_.” Levon was unwavering now. Unblinking. Stony. 

“Yes. Yes,” Robbie breathed. “I mean it. I do.”

“Okay.” Levon nodded until Robbie nodded with him. “Okay, baby, I believe you. Okay,” he broke into a broad excited smile. “I’m gonna fuck you so good, baby. I can’t wait.”

Robbie whined, aroused and needy, and mercifully, Levon went down, and Robbie didn’t have much to say after that. 

They made it back just before dinner. They stopped at the creek and spread mud all over their arms and faces to combat the sweltering heat. During the day, it was blistering; at night it was swampy and stifling. 

Nell took one look at them, laughed, and then told them to go wash clean before the meal. They did and ended up locked in the bathroom, giggling and kissing each other. 

Robbie got a hand down Levon’s pants, and Levon said, “Tonight, tonight, tonight,”, warding back his charge. A final kiss. Then they went and ate a big dinner, squished between Wheeler and Modena, Robbie keeping a straight face while Levon’s broad hand skated his upper thigh. 

Records after dinner and drink. Diamond negated Robbie’s age, and handed him a glass anyways. The records were old, older than Robbie had ever heard. At first, he watched, as Nell and Diamond danced, and then Modena grabbed his hand and swung him close and they danced until it got silly, and Robbie had to sit back down on the floor, sweating and smiling and tingling all over from the drink. Levon got an arm around him. 

And Robbie understood. He understood from the way Levon looked at his parents. That arm, the half hug, was their dance, as plain in sight as it could be. 

They helped do the dishes and set the living room back in order. Robbie stole glances at Levon the entire time, grinning, eyes flashing with excitement. Levon smiled back reservedly. Part of him wished Robbie would knock it off, or at least gain some inconspicuousness. Part of Robbie was alight, thrumming and crackling with excitement. Another part of him felt like he was going to his death. 

Then, before he knew it, everything was straightened, and it was off to bed. 

“Nah.” Levon had his hands on his hips. Robbie sat on the bed, clothed, shivering, getting scared. “The bed ain’t gonna work.”

“But…” 

It was supposed to be perfect. Was supposed to feel real close and good and safe. Like earlier that day in the field. Now, the moon cast only half of Levon under her light, and the sounds of the southern night poured in and something else lurked around. Something eerie. Robbie hadn’t asked for that. 

“Nah.”

“But you were gonna…”

Then, hushed and fervent, Levon took his hand and crept them out into the hall, out the back door, down the ledge the house was stilted on, and off they ran into the woods, into the darkness.

They stopped at the creek again. 

It trickled slowly, glinting, framed in low heavy boughs that bowed to the water. All around the forest rustled, and the moon shone bright above. Reeds at the bank, lush and deep, and Levon sat down on the moss. 

“Come sit with me, baby.”

“We’re not doing this here.” Robbie looked nervous. 

“Nah, of course we ain’t. Jus’ come sit with me.”

Robbie sat. A beat passed, staring into each other’s eyes, leaning close, and then Levon kissed him. Had Robbie ever kissed a girl like this before? With such sincerity? He didn’t think so. Perhaps with excitement, but love? Never. 

“Now,” Levon said. He put a hand over Robbie’s heart. “Baby, you’re shaking. Your heart’s goin’ so fast.”

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared,” he whispered. “Don’t be sc—hey, look at me. Don’t be scared. Nothing gonna get you out here, I ain’t gonna do anything. It’s gonna be alright.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Now, there’s a hill over there, an’ then a flat grove of trees. An’ we’re gonna go up there, and it’ll be done, alright?”

“I need to get naked?”

“Nah. Just take your shoes off and don’t worry about anything else.”

“This really wasn’t what I imagined,” Robbie said as they crossed a shallow part of the creek, feeling daintily through the dark for each flat stone before they stepped. Holding hands to stay balanced. 

“Yeah, an’ what did you have in mind, honey?”

“Oh, you know…” They made it to dry land again and wound up the little bank and hill where it was still mossy and dense and soft under their toes. “Like in all those books and stuff.”

“What books?”

“I don’t know. Those stories. A good bed and it’s warm and light, and it’s not some dark fucking wood were anything could get us.”

“We got a better chance of being caught if we was in the light. If it was day time. That’s a shit bed and it’s loud and I got Linda on one wall and Wheeler on the other. Can’t have you making noises an’—”

“You want me making noises?”

“It’s preferable. So I know how I’m doing.”

They reached the trees. Levon sidled in, pressed Robbie against one of them, gently, heavy, weighing him down. 

“You better do _good_.” Robbie slid his hands into Levon’s back pockets. “I deserve it.”

“Don’t be a brat.” Levon pecked him on the lips. “You don’t deserve anything.” 

“Yes, but I want things.” He yanked Levon close, ground them together. “Want you.”

“Want me?”

A hiss. “ _Yes._ ”

“Turn around.”

“What?”

“Turn around, drop your pants.”

“Here?”

 _He’d asked to be laid down, on a white bed in some golden hour, like a bride, untouched before this._

Spit slick fingers probed deep inside him. Robbie wrapped his arms around the tree, sweaty forehead to it’s rough bark, trying desperately not to rut. Then, slowly, painfully, it happened, and he cried out.

_He hadn’t asked for this._

But he wanted it. Wanted it bad. He had something to give, to give up, to lose, and if it had to happen, he wanted to do it for Levon. Nobody else. 

“You ain’t saying much.” Lips on his neck. Tongue lapping up sweat.

“Hurts…”

“I know, baby, I know.” Hands smoothed back his hair, pulled, just a tug, until he was taut and bowed, up on his toes. “M’sorry.”

“But how else.” Robbie had never felt so full or claimed, and then suddenly he was empty, and in one stroke full again, and he shouted. Levon’s hand clamped over his mouth. “But how else,” he gasped into the night. “Oh my god, that’s so much.”

“Sorry,” Levon apologized again, out of breath.

“No, it’s okay.”

_What else did he deserve? Something easy? Something with grace or dignity? Great honor hadn’t sired him and great dignity hadn’t brought him here. He groveled for scraps. Self-respect was for later, when he succeeded. For now, he was a kid, tagging along, a half-breed. Or as crueler men had called him, a mutt. He deserved no pure bed for his undefiled body, no security._

 _And it wasn’t_ punishment. _Levon_ loved _him_. 

“Different than I thought,” Robbie whispered on the way back, as they put on their shoes. 

“I know,” Levon said. He pulled Robbie against his chest. “Was it okay though? My baby happy, finally?”

“Yes,” Robbie grinned, and kissed him. Final consummation, and every previous act of love, backseats and bathrooms and motel beds, and even the field today, was for the young. “Yes, thank you.”

“I love you, baby,” Levon said, and dipped him down into another kiss.

“I love you, too.”

They started back home. It ached low. Robbie had gotten a hand down there after, came away with sticky fingers, and felt properly dirty. 

“I’m gonna sleep mighty good tonight,” Levon said as the house came into view. He skirted them along the forest's edge line, kept them out of the porch light. “Had a real big day with you.”

“Really busy day,” Robbie said. “Lots happened.”

“Lots did.”

“How are we gonna go back to Ronnie?”

“What do you mean?” 

“How are we gonna go back to being on the road and playing every night and, you know…”

“I don’t, actually,” Levon said kindly. They went into the house. Down the hall, in the bathroom, slowly running the tub until it had an inch of water. Washing their feet, ankles. Brushing their teeth side by side in the mirror, taking turns to spit, grinning at each other in the reflection. 

Lights off. 

Back in Levon’s bed, down to just bare skin. Stroking and smoothing flesh, kissing softly. 

“It’s just that—” Robbie began. “It’s just that I feel like it’s different now, and so having us go back to life like normal seems...I don’t know, it seems kinda silly.”

“What’s _different?_ ”

“I feel different,” Robbie insisted. 

“Eh,” Levon slumped back against the pillow and lit a cigarette. “Shit, you always feel different after. I did. S’what happens. Then,” he passed Robbie the cigarette. “You get up the next day and move on with your life, and fuck other girls and boys, and it ain’t a big deal. Like driving.”

“ _Driving?_ ”

“Yeah. Ya see people out driving them cars and wonderin’ how the hell they’re doing it and then you get behind the wheel, try not fuck up too bad and the next thing you know, you’re doing it without even thinking. You feel so old at first. Then it’s just a nuisance and…” He stopped when he noticed the way Robbie was watching him, glassy-eyed. “Can you drive?”

“Not really.” Robbie handed back the cigarette. “Mom got me doing it, off the record. But I’m never home so…”

“I’ll teach you,” Levon said. He grinned.

“Teaching me a lot of things, Levon Helm.” Robbie hugged him.

“I like teaching.”

They laughed, and kissed, nestled low in the bed. Talking got boring. Doing was much more exciting.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some context: the photo session taking place at the end is for _The Basement Tapes_ album cover

Shangri-La, December, 1974 

“I wanna stop touring,” Robbie said flatly one afternoon over Shangri-La’s kitchen table. 

Scribbling on the pad in front of him. Levon sat across from him, smoking a cigarette. Robbie didn’t even raise his head; he just said it and kept working on a little pile of lyrics and notes he’d left there a few days before when they’d all agreed to break for the weekend. A new song he thought had potential:

 _Was it somethin' that somebody said? Honey, you know we broke the rules. Was somebody up against the law? Honey, you know I'd die for you._

Robbie tapped the paper with two fingers absently. Then,

“I wanna stop,” he repeated, when Levon said nothing. He finally looked up. His compatriot was silent, and watched him idly. Piercing blue had become foggy these days.

It was Sunday, when they’d all agreed not to come in to work and the place was eerie, abandoned looking. Quiet and blue and bleak. Through the back screen door, Levon saw the crashing ocean. The absent sun made the normally gorgeous coast look violent and cold.

Levon lit another cigarette off the end of his first.

“Are you not speaking to me, then?” Robbie arched an eyebrow. 

“I ain’t talking about this again,” Levon grumbled. “Only fucking thing I hear whenever you open your mouth these days. Believe you me,” he held up his hands, “Everyone knows where you stand, baby.”

“But don’t you agree?”

“There don’t seem to be an option of having any other opinion.” He tapped ashes in the tray between them. “We don’t even know if there’s gonna be a tour. Let’s slow down. We haven’t even finished the album yet.”

“And who’s responsible for that?” Robbie said out the corner of his mouth, writing again. 

“What’s that, Duke?”

“I wanna quit,” Robbie said, unperturbed. He readjusted his glasses and reached for the phone that was mounted above the table. Dialing, phone scrunched between his shoulder and ear, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth, still scribbling. Always going, always taking notes. Bob used to do that, Levon thought vaguely, all hours of the night, on his eccentric typewriter.

Robbie always had been an imitator, before anything else. 

On the other end of the line, a fuzzy _Allô?_ and Robbie said it back to Dominique with a pretty passable accent. Levon heard laughter. 

A pause, and for once, Robbie stopped writing. He beamed, even if she could not see him. Levon couldn’t imagine living with a cunt like him, but still such a smile was infuriating, indicative of his pretty wife and happy home, and Levon half-wished to take the cigarette and burn Robbie right between the eyes. 

“It was pretty good, wasn’t it? Yeah...yeah, I know other words…” a long pause and a laugh, “But still good, yeah?” He smiled. “I have been practicing. Ah....yeah, sure, honey, okay…” something else that made him laugh, gloriously. 

Wordlessly, he waved Levon’s hand out, and took the cigarette. Dominique was still talking. At a pause, Robbie said, “No, I’m just calling like usual. Yeah, gonna be a late night tonight. Home by eight?” He waited while she spoke. “Mm-hm, yes, I know...yes, I’m sorry. Say good-night to Seb and Delphine for me, and I can put Alex to bed right when I get home….yeah, thank you.” 

He took a drag. “You need me to grab anything on the way home? No? You’re all good? Okay, yeah just checking...okay...mh-mm, okay...bye. I love you, too. Yes, okay...bye.”

“How sweet of you,” Levon said dryly. Robbie glowered at him, his radiance fading. 

“I do this for you, you know,” he said, took a final pull, and handed the cigarette back over. 

“I didn’t say _I_ wanted this. You keep askin’ for it.”

“And you keep giving it,” Robbie said, back to writing. “Anyway, I want to stop touring, preferably not even _begin_ it after the album’s out. They’re gonna want us back on the road, but I say we finally put our foot down and stop. S’too dangerous. No money in the world is worth our lives, is my take on it. You have an hour by the way,” he finished, eyeing his watch. “Then I gotta be on the road.”

“Home to Dominique,” Levon said sourly, and stood to make sure the back door was locked.

Robbie could never get over how funny her name sounded out of Levon’s mouth. When her friends or parents said it, it sounded like glass, or a soft breeze, but it just stretched out of Levon’s mouth gruffly. He was a rough man. Had he always been? 

They went back to Levon’s room. Dim, furnished with only a bed and a chair for when one was feeling perhaps more observant than participatory, and a small window that looked out to the ranch’s back yard, and far far out, the ocean. Robbie thought the room appeared unlived in. An unhappy place. But what else did Levon need it for? He spent most days sleeping. 

Levon sat on the bed. Robbie stood. Neither moved, or went to untie a shoe or unbutton a shirt. It was a battle of wills, of pride, until Levon sneered, and his gaze turned predatory, and Robbie let him win. Being hunted thrilled him and set him alight in low places. 

“Strip.”

“Huh?”

Levon lit a third cigarette. He raised a foot and nudged Robbie’s crotch with the toe of his boot. 

“Ya heard me, baby. You’re gonna strip and get on your knees and suck my cock, and I’m gonna smoke this cigarette right here while ya do it.”

“And then?” Robbie crossed his arms, but he was flushing and rocking slightly on his feet, trying to ease some pressure. 

Levon’s eyes drifted below the belt, saw his excitement. “Oh, baby, I know you. I can see how excited you are, see how bad you want it. Baby, you’re mine. Always have been. You’re gonna get on your knees, suck my cock, and when I want, I’m gonna fuck you. On your back, just how you like it. In case you forgot whose you were.”

“I wouldn’t ever,” Robbie whispered. 

“Never?”

“No. Never.”

“Then show me.” 

Sex was ritual now. That’s all it was. Another bad habit picked up on the road, in youth. It happened often. It was precise. As predictable and needed as eating dinner every day, or getting gas, or brushing your teeth, or taking out the trash. Shaving, grocery shopping, doing the dishes. You didn’t think, you just did. 

It had stopped being fun for a while now. That wasn’t what had Robbie returning. 

Some days were softer than others. If he caught Levon on a tender day, he could pretend they were young again for an hour or two. Other days it was dark and fevered, and he trudged home sore, sweating, swaying on his feet. 

Levon found out one day that Robbie sometimes liked being yelled at.

_“You yelled at me once when we were kids. Except you were older and I really liked having you like me.”_

_“I liked liking you.”_

_“And it made me cry, ‘cause you were angry, and I hated making you mad at me, and when you yelled, I was scared.”_

_“Yeah, Duke?” It’s a tender day, and Robbie’s snuggled against Levon’s bare chest, strong arms around him. It’s just before dinner, before he’s home to Dominique and his babes._

_“Except,” Robbie raises his eyes. Lidded, tired, brown turned amber in the falling light and Levon kisses him. Shouldn’t like kissing something you’re learning to hate._

_“‘Cept what, sugar?”_

_Robbie grins at the name. He thinks it sounds better on the sweet southern girls. But it’s still ridiculously charming, even if he’s not some swooning thing._

_“Then, after I’d had some time, during the nights and stuff, I realized…” he pauses, laughing, ashamed. “I realized it kinda made me...um…”_

_“Made you feel funny? All hot? Down here?” And one of Levon’s hands leaves his back to snake down between his thighs._

_“Yeah.”_

_“Interesting stuff, Duke. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”_

_“So you’re saying there’s a next time?”_

_“I ain’t saying nothing, just sayin’ that’s a mighty interesting piece of information you gave me.”_

_But smiles are wry, and Robbie starts laughing, relieved, and they fall back onto the bed, kissing again, and for a moment, not at perilous odds._

Levon pinned Robbie to the bed, naked, and sucked him. Robbie pretended to struggle, was held down tighter, pretended to hate the hot mouth around him, the sweeping wet tongue, and had it not been for the pinching fingers at the root of him, he would’ve come then. 

Levon sat back on the bed, sniffing and thumbing at the tears in his eyes. 

“It’s in the bedside. Sit back and get yourself ready.”

Robbie retrieved the small bottle of lube with shaking hands. He reclined against the pillows and did as he was told. Levon stripped and watched him, grinning. He was pink on the cheeks, sweat shimmering at the hairline. He looked tired.

Two fingers deep, gnawing his lip in concentration. Robbie’s wrist hurt at such a bent angle. Levon grabbed his right ankle, extended his leg, and kissed his foot, first the top, the ridges of bone, and then the knot on the side. 

“Keep going. You’re gorgeous.”

“How much _longer_.”

“Another finger.”

“God, I’m already ready.”

“Well, I ain’t. I like watching you. Like watching you write, and play that mean guitar of yours. Like watching you on stage, got a nice view from behind the kit—” Levon smiled in a dirty way. “—wish your jackets were shorter, but what can you do...like watching you like this.”

Robbie got a third finger inside. He groaned, face screwed up with the effort. Levon smiled even wider. 

“You don’t like watching me,” Robbie glowered. Petulant. “You don’t like me anymore. You just like being in control.” 

Like fire, Levon slapped the bottom of his foot. Robbie yelped. 

“Apologize.”

“No! It’s the truth.”

“ _Baby._ ”

“No.”

Without warning, Levon pushed Robbie flat on his back and entered him. 

Robbie moaned in shock.

“Now I’m ready, Duke.”

“You could’ve warned me.” His chest heaved, and his eyes were empty dark wells, blown from passion. 

“No fun in that.”

Pinioned under his mate. Stuffed full. Gasping for a rhythm that refused to begin. He tried fucking himself. Levon gripped his hip.

“Slow down there, Duke. Slow down.” 

“But it feels good.” 

“ _You_ feel good. So tight around my cock. But I don’t wanna come just yet. We ain’t boys no fucking more, yeah? Lemme love you.” 

“You don’t love me.”

Levon slapped him. Then he backhanded him the other way. “Shut up. Stop fucking saying shit like that.”

“Don’t hit me!”

Was this part of the game? Was it something else? Did either dare to find out?

“You ain’t my elder. Hush up.” Levon fisted Robbie violently. Surprised, Robbie clawed at his back with blunt nails. “You want it? Want it bad?” 

“ _Yes._ ” 

The hand stopped, and Robbie whined. 

“How bad do you want it?”

“I’m not gonna beg for it.”

“ _How,_ ” each word was slotted through the teeth, piercing, threatening. Just the way Robbie liked it, “ _bad do you want it, baby?_ ”

“Keep going.”

“How bad?”

“ _Go._ ”

“How bad?” Levon pinched the hollow of Robbie’s cheeks, forcing his mouth open. They stared one another down. Robbie’s eyes glittered, and Levon wondered, briefly, what would happen if he hit Robbie again. 

Harder. For a real. A decent punishment. One that was deserved. Not one of their bedroom games. No. Real. A beating 

“Bad,” Robbie choked out. “Please…” 

Levon hammered home. 

“Oh my god, oh my god...” 

“Yes, hun. There you go... _so good._ ”

Robbie was beyond words.

The bed banged a deafening racket against the wall. Through his stretched fog, Robbie remembered young nights when he wasn’t even breaking seventeen, pent up in motels, alone, naive, hearing all around him through the thin walls. Sounds of other people’s pleasure. Levon’s enjoyment. Only after their consummation could Robbie admit his jealousy was not from being neglected, or overlooked, but that Levon giving something, and Robbie himself hadn’t been the one to get it. 

“You gonna come, baby?”

“Yes. Fuck, _Levon._ ” It wound into an incoherent gasp of need. Robbie angled his hips up even higher.

“Spread your legs for me. Wide. There you go.”

Levon grabbed the headboard with both hands for leverage. Fucking faster, deeper, faster, deep as he could go, faster, faster, _fasterfasterfaster,c’mon baby, come on my cock, i wanna fuck you all night and day like this, c’mon, sweet thing, faster, faster—_

Robbie came. 

Levon growled and lowered himself into the slide of their stomachs, and the wet mess between them. 

“Hold still, almost there. Almost, baby, promise, just gimme a second.” He laid his entire weight atop Robbie. “Jesus Christ…”

Robbie, overstimulated, distraught with pleasure and fear, grew teary-eyed and whimpery. 

That did it: to see such majesty broken to bits. He’d worked so hard to steal it all, to build himself a throne and a great court and was now enslaved to nothing but his own primal needs. 

With a gasp, a low rumble of _Jaime_ , a name saved for only the dearest and honest of times, Levon spilled. 

A long minute passed, filled with heavy labored breathing, two souls finally at rest. The silence of the afternoon crept back into their world, through the open window. Eventually, Robbie sighed, and squirmed under Levon’s weight. 

“Could you…” .

Levon pulled out and rolled onto his back. “Thank you.” Robbie panted, and put a hand to his damp forehead, hair matted and stuck with sweat. 

“Oh, shit, Lee, honey, that was…” Robbie couldn’t get his breath back. He swallowed and tried again. “That was great, thank you.”

Levon said nothing. Robbie looked over to see him staring at the ceiling, empty-eyed. His chest rose and lowered, but the heat was leaving, and he just looked haggard now. Robbie sat up. Chafed between the legs, wet even lower, wilted prick, aching, well-fucked, spent, pleased, hoping he could make it to the bathroom. 

The mirror was a full wall above the sink that wrapped around to above the tub, on the ceiling too, because it used to be a bordello. Robbie couldn’t really imagine watching himself shit, but supposed the reflective ceiling was for bath time activities. 

They said women changed after pregnancy. Looser, not as tight in the gut after having babies. Robbie though he’d changed a bit, too, after marriage and being on the road and giving his wife three children. He was still slim. Flat. Young enough. The cocaine helped. But still _changed_. 

And here he was at the heart of everything, still fucking around. Dancing with more than one. 

Robbie came back to bed with a damp towel, and a little vial and straw he’d found in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. 

“Here,” Levon handed him a cigarette, and Robbie traded it for the bottle of coke. “Lay back.”

“I gotta get clean first.” 

“Nah, lay back.” He sprinkled a messy line along Robbie’s cock and snorted it up. Robbie giggled at the sensation, until Levon lapped at the sticky mess on his stomach, and it got exciting. 

“You’re gonna make me hard again. Lee. Lee, stop. Let up, honey. Unless you wanna blow me.”

“Ah, shit, don’t have another round in me. You want some?” Levon scooped a bit on his finger and raised it to Robbie’s nose. “There you go, baby. Real good.”

For a second, they sat, breathing heavy and smiling softly at each other. The afternoon light bled into the room, mixing with the air. Reaching for Levon was like reaching through a thick fog, but eventually Robbie caught him and grabbed his left hand, kissed his knuckles. Pinching his palms, nosing his heartline. Robbie gently bit his ring finger, horizontally, right below the bottom knuckle. 

Where a ring would've been slotted. 

“Nothing there.”

“Nah, Libby and I ain’t getting married. You know that, Duke.” He grabbed Robbie’s own left hand. “Yours is empty, too.”

“We don’t wear them.”

“And who’s idea was that?”

“Mine.”

“Why?”

“Cause it’s, you know, about being something of somebody’s else. But just theirs, you know.” Robbie got sheepish. He wouldn’t meet Levon’s eyes. “It's reservation. It’s..uh…” 

“Possession?”

“Yeah.”

“I know what a wedding ring means, Duke. S’why I don’t got one.”

“Me neither.”

“Then you’re an honest man. And that’s more than I’ll ever be. Dominique should feel lucky.”

“She doesn’t know,” Robbie said. “She thinks I’m up here doing more work.”

“Well, you’re sure as hell doing _somethin’_.” Levon laughed half-heartedly. “And of course she knows.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“She married you and everything that you came with. So maybe you took your vows, and ya stood there and kissed her, but you’re still bein’ honest. And that’s admirable.”

Robbie smiled at him flatly. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’re a good man, Jaime. A real good one.”

“But I’m not.” He was wet-eyed. 

“Yes, you are. I ain’t saying it again.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Now get dressed.”

“You kicking me out?”

“Nah, just put your pants back on. I want some decency.”

“We’ve never been decent.” 

There used to be a time when all they could do was get naked together. Robbie had been with many undressed pretty girls, but it was never half as fun or exciting to see Levon as he was naturally made. 

“Just get fuckin’ dressed, Duke.” 

Ah, and so it seemed the tenderness of the afternoon had run out. Curtain drawn again, his soul shuttered shut. Robbie could at least enjoy how long it had lasted. 

“Jesus, okay.” He bent to scoop up his clothes and was hit across the ass. Shocked, he nearly fell over, and Levon sank back onto the bed with ribald laughter. 

“God, you’re fucking rude.” Robbie scowled, embarrassed, and got on his underwear and jeans. He shrugged on his shirt, tucked it, half-buttoned it, and then went into the bathroom to observe his handiwork. 

“You got a brush or something?”

“In the right drawer.”

From the other room, weight shifted on the bed. 

Robbie took a meticulous time brushing out the knots and snares. He did look fucked, probably reeked of it, too. He lit a cigarette and stood looking at himself in the mirror for a long time. Seizing up his wrongs, taking stock of his guilts and pleasures, revelling in his exhaustion, He didn’t think Levon and the others always understood what it was like. Waking up to the same sad reflection every day wore a man down after a while. Life did that. This job did. The road.

“I don’t wanna beat this to death,” Robbie began, smoking and still eyeing himself down in the mirror. “Cause I don’t think I’m gonna change your mind…” he started for the bedroom, “but could you just consider for a moment...what are you doing?”

Levon was stomach down and scrabbling with a small shoebox under the bed. He pulled it out and sat back with a triumphant sigh.

“Yes?” He looked at Robbie with bright eyes. 

“I think we should…” but the words died halfway out his mouth. 

Box in his lap, Levon opened it and pulled out a spoon and plastic bag and a small leather case. 

“Lee. Don’t.”

“You wanna stop touring?” Levon said. He rose from the bed with the spoon, pushing past Robbie to get to the sink.

“Levon. Lee, honey, no, don’t do that. I don’t wanna see you doing…”

“You were saying, baby?”

At the sink now, tap turned on, a little splash in the spoon’s bowl. 

“Put that down. Levon. Stop it.”

“If it’s more bullshit about the road, I don’t wanna hear it. Cause I think it’s alright. We got fans who wanna see us, and girls who wanna see us, and girls _I_ wanna see. A couple fellas, too.” Levon grinned and winked at Robbie. Looks like that used to get him aching. Now it just came off crazed.

“Levon!” Robbie tried to grab the barrel. “Levon, you clean that?”

“Hey! Hey!” Levon swiped at him with the needle. “I’ll stab you. I will! Get off a’ me. Get off!” He succeeded in shoving Robbie away. “This is just mine. I ain’t sharing it. She’s mighty clean. Get back.”

“Levon, honey, don’t do that. Don’t kill...you’re killing yourself.”

“Life’s killing us.”

“Not if you do it first.”

“Then I go my own way.”

“No, you can’t, you can’t. I can’t have you do this, I—”

“You _what?_ ” Levon eyed him sharply. Was, for a single second, not devoted to his enslavement. “You gonna kick me out? You gonna tell somebody? Everybody knows. Everyone. They all doin’ it, too. You send me packing and you lose Rick and Richard. Maybe even, Garth, too. Then what’ll you have? A bad voice?”

“ _Levon._ ” Robbie’s voice caught. “Levon, that’s not what I was gonna say. No. Don’t do this.” 

Levon looked at him wearily. He whispered, “I do this all the time, Robbie. You know that.” 

_Be strong for a brother who can’t be strong for himself._

But at his own name, Robbie crumpled. Betrayed by his own love, tears came, and he cried. 

He stood in the bleak four pm, and watched Levon slot the barrel, twist the needle. Sparked lighter. Ripping at plastic with his teeth. Many practiced movements. Robbie sank into the chair that faced the window, head in his hands. Couldn’t watch. Then it was done.

And he wept like a child. 

Los Angeles, Early Spring, 1975 

They snickered at him from across the room. 

He caught it when lighting a smoke, the way they watched him surreptitiously but couldn’t contain themselves and started laughing. 

“Alright, everyone get into position! Line up like I told you. C’mon, let’s go!” 

The photographer had spent all morning herding everyone around as they tried on different outfits and funny hats and messed about, not listening. 

Somebody had shepherded Robbie into a blue tunic, a Mao suit, with a real stupid cap and a guitar the same color. He’d put it on without complaint; he didn’t want to be here in some smelly YMCA basement anyways, crammed together with a bunch of strangers and a bunch of people hired for the photo. 

“Get in your places!” 

This was followed by a lot of shuffling and grumbling, stubbing out smokes and bumping into one another, despite having spent an arduous amount of time earlier in the day arranging the photo. 

Levon bumped into his shoulder, _accidentally._

“What’s so funny?” Robbie snapped. “Something really great you and Rick are having a laugh over?”

“Ah, nothin’, Duke. By the way, you look sharp as hell in that get-up.” 

“ _Why?_ ” Robbie glanced down at himself. “What’s wrong with it?” 

“Oh, it’s perfect for you, sugar.” He was smarmy. “Really goes well with your eyes. Makes you _glow._ ”

“You’re a fucking dick sometimes, you know that?” 

“Places, gentlemen!”

“Oh, but you _like it._ ” And Levon got into his spot, but not before a quick smirking wink over his shoulder, slipping his dark glasses back on, hiding again. Smug. 

In the dressing room, Robbie stared at himself in the mirror. He turned from side to side, surveying the suit, wondering what had made them laugh so hard. 

The door swung open, and Bob came in. 

“Something wrong with this?” Robbie asked, focused on his reflection again, tilting his head from side to side. He started unbuttoning the jacket. “Stained, wrinkled? Thought it was a bit gaudy, but I’m still trim enough, yeah?”

“They’re bullshitting you, you know that, right?” Bob put his own clothes down and began untying his shoes. “A joke.” 

“Hm?” Robbie hadn’t heard over the rustle.

“A _joke._ You’re a joke to them. S’why they got you dressed up like Mao.”

“So it’s a statement.”

“Yes. It’s politicking, I would say. There’s a joke and you’re the punchline.”

“Okay, Jesus.” Robbie stripped off his shirt. “I get it.”

Bob stared up at him.

“Like the show?”

“Always have. You know, you get prettier every time I see you. Time’s good to you.”

“Pretty?” Robbie made quick work of changing. 

“Handsome.” Bob grinned and undid another button on Robbie’s shirt. “My boy-prophet, walking handsome and hot.”

“That yours?”

“Springsteen.”

“Ah.” 

“You have an okay day today? Saw Levon come up to you. He give you any shit?”

“ _Steady._ It was fine. You know how he is.”

“Lover’s tiff?”

“Hey!” Robbie gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “What did I just tell you? Watch it.”

“I may not be in your sweet bed anymore, but I still got some rights to speak frankly with you, yes?”

“Depends on what you have to say.”

“I just don’t want him pushing you around, is all. Or have you ruminating. You’re always quite quick to defend him. He doing the same for you?”

“Bobby—”

“I’m being honest with you!” Bob folded up the striped jacket he’d worn for the photographs and set his hat on top of it. “You finished? You got your things?”

“Yes.”

Robbie trailed him out the dressing room and back to the room where they'd first picked out their clothes. It was empty. Bob lingered to light a cigarette. He waved Robbie in and lit one for him, too.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Where’s everyone gone?”

“Home, probably. Or whatever this lot does after hours.”

They left, winding back through the building. 

“I can’t speak for Garth,” Robbie said, “Goes and sleeps, I bet. He’s got narcolepsy, you know.”

“You’ve told me many times.”

“As for Richard and Rick, they’re probably already drinking themselves blind. Surprised I haven’t gotten some three am phone call yet. Car gone right over the guardrail on the 1. Roadkill in Santa Monica or—”

“And Lee?”

Robbie faltered. They pushed into brilliant sunshine and the loud thrum of traffic. Bob made it three steps down. 

“That’s _Levon_ , to you.” Robbie watched the street. “I can’t speak for whatever he does.”

“Why not? You _know_ , don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, but I’m not in control of it. I can’t control him.”

“Bingo.” 

They crossed the parking lot. 

“Levon Helm,” Bob said, “has never been, and never will be, something you can control.”

“I know that.” 

“But I don’t think you do.”

“I do!”

“Then you don’t ever properly adjust your expectations.”

“Oh, I _know_ what he’s gonna do. I know what he’s like,” Robbie said.

“You can say that again.”

Robbie sneered at him. 

“Then why are you always disappointed?” Bob continued. “You gotta stop condemning all of them if you’re gonna do the same thing.”

“Hey, I’m no saint! I know,” Robbie held up his hands, “But it's different.” 

“How so?”

“Cause it doesn’t fuck up my work, is all. I get to the studio every day, I’m writing, playing, working my ass off for them, and they’re not doing shit.”

“Then you’re just carrying it differently. They get their work done. You got, what, five albums under your belt?”

“Nearly six.”

“Okay, then, so it gets done! They’re gonna screw around whether you’re upset about it or not, so why get mad?”

“You sound like Dominique,” Robbie grumbled. He took a drag. “I get out of the house so I don’t have to hear it from her.”

“That’s not why you leave.” 

“Can it, would you?”

“All I’m saying is that you’ve got to lower your expectations or clean up. Dial down the hypocrisy. The only person responsible for all your pain is _you_.” Bob unlocked his car door and slid in. 

“You act like you’re so much better than all of us,” Robbie said.

“Because I am. I've earned my opinion and the right to say it. See, you’ve these high expectations, and they keep breaking you every time. It’ll kill you.” He said all of this out of the corner of his mouth, while starting up the car, as if it were so inconsequential. 

“I’m not the one who’s gonna die,” Robbie said. Bob squinted out at him through the open window. 

“We’re _all_ addicts, Robbie. We all have something in our lives that plagues us and ensnares us. Makes us fools. So…”

“Yes?” 

“Just keep that in mind, okay? Before you go and get mad at them. Before it’s something of superiority or morality.”

“They’re all falling apart,” Robbie whispered, scared. “And I don’t know what to do, because I feel some days like we’re losing everything.” 

He’d never told a soul about that one night in Michigan, over a year ago, when he’d gone looking for Levon and found a dead body. 

“Then go save it.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Then go find what’s killing _you_ , and kill it instead.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Something’s gotta give, honey. The road, your relationship, your work.”

“I’m not leaving Dominique!” Immediately, Robbie knew Bob hadn’t meant it that way. “Sorry.”

“I won’t backseat drive here,” Bob said. “That’s not good for anybody. But,” and he paused, thinking, “I just want you to understand where I’m coming from.”

“And where might that be?” On the offensive again, feeling the need to defend a man who wasn’t even here now. He was back up on the mount, in bed, waiting, no doubt for the sound of Robbie’s car in the drive and boots on the side porch. 

“Alright,” Bob said. “If that’s how you’re going to be.”

“Sorry.”

“Nope, it’s fine. I’ll go. Just…” he patted the steering wheel. “Just think about it, okay? For your own sake?”

“Okay.”

Bob gave him a final small wave. Robbie waved back as the window rolled up. And all that stared back was his own reflection, before the car slowly drove off and he was once again alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Somewhere, sometime, in 1975

Love grew hard. Labored.

Robbie learned to hate Shangri-La. She’d been exciting once, like new love. Now he thought her dark, sleazy. Stains on the walls, reminders of her previous use, and every room smelled like stale smoke and old sex. Some of it was the work of others, some of it was his, but it didn’t matter. The place was awful, and the album wouldn’t give out and give over the way he wanted it to. 

Going home to Dominique and his children was invaluable. They made him feel worth something. Appreciated. Shangri-La, and the people in it, just made him feel like a pack mule, pulling everyone’s weight. Or worse, whorish. 

This was work that he’d dreamed of since he was young, a job that was supposed to feel good, except all he felt was filthy and exhausted and used, while men danced around him, ungrateful, piggish, and drunk on their own wealth.

Levon came over when the house was empty. 

Robbie drove up to Shangri-La when it wasn't. 

He let himself get pounded until he cried. He laid down or knelt or leaned his mouth over from the passenger seat on dark fast Canyon drives: a ride they couldn’t get off of. It was all the same. Didn’t matter. He liked it. 

Bob was kind enough to tap him for the Rolling Thunder Revue. So he showed up and played the songs and smiled, but Bob never got a hand on his arm or a moment alone, or something in the back shower room or whatever he’d expected, so Robbie left. 

Back to his family.

Dominique drank too much when she was out. Robbie stayed with the children and played games with them and colored and ran toy cars around and hid while they sought. Then he snuggled them down into their beds and said they were good children and he loved them very much.

Bedtime books and forehead kisses and coming back sometimes when they were restless.

Son in the cradle, rocked to sleep. 

Alone. Completely. Mirrors watched him as he passed. 

Bent over his bathroom sink, cutting up lines. Who said it had to be done in bathrooms or on mirrors? Sick fuck. Wanting people to look themselves in the eyes as they snorted up their lives. 

Then he got a few beers from the fridge and went into the living room, flipping through his record collection, always trying to find something apocalyptic during these hours, drank and swayed and danced himself blind. 

What did he look like from the street? To anyone walking down the Colony road at this hour; an evening stroll with a loved one, or taking the dog for a shit, anything. Sometimes he forgot to close the curtains and knew they saw something addled, drunk, stumbling, possessed. Desperate.

That’s what they _thought_ they saw. Silly people.

He was an upstanding man, happily married, the father of three wonderful children. Work ground the nerves from time to time; he’d been through a lot. The heart was so delicate, too delicate to be a toy. And he was everyone’s favorite thing to play with. 

Silly silly people. He was fine. 

Truly, he was no addict. He didn’t have the gene he worried would rear its head in his mother. Jesus Christ, work just made him wanna crawl out his skin, or sometimes it was like he’d finally break apart. He wanted to run, flee, go sprinting off down the Pacific Highway until he was gone, gone, gone, and it was all behind him. The coke made him want to bolt. But this was different, whatever _it_ was. This frustration. This pain. Something snapping at his heels and if it finally got a bite, he was done for. 

It gave him the urge to smash something and scream bloody murder when looking into all their stupid doped up faces...

Dominique stumbled home and found him on the couch, staring into space. Through veils of vice, they checked on their children and staggered into bed. 

Then Robbie was back at work, a recurring nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, a carousel that spun until he was sick. They dragged _Northern Lights, Southern Cross_ together. Conception that didn't want to take root, resistant and fighting. Impossible things. 

_“Get the fuck up, would you! Do some shit, help out!” He barges into Levon’s back bedroom. “Get up!” Robbie beats him with a pillow and his own open hand._

_Richard’s nowhere to be found. Garth watches passively. Rick cowers, not as sensitive as Richard, but younger than his brothers, who quarrel now over sacrifices, fruit of the land over first of the flock._

_“I’m up, you fuckin’ slaver. I’m here!”_

_They fight in the kitchen. It’s nearly three in the afternoon. Levon makes himself breakfast of cigarettes and coffee, and halfway through, a mug hits a wall and shatters. Aimed at Robbie, who’d ducked. Then the screen door bangs, screech of car tires, the awful sliding scrape down the drive, and Robbie fishtails it out of there, gone._

At Shangri-La, they fought so horribly all the time, like his momma and Jim used to. They fought over _their_ child: their body of work, the thing they’d all given their souls to for years now. 

Then everyone cleared out, long hard days these days, and they made the meanest love they could. Right in the very kitchen they loved to scream at each other in, or back in Levon’s bed, in that ugly bathroom full of mirrors. 

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Showing them ugly reflections, because life had gotten too sticky, too perilous, and they had all become ugly ugly people. 

Life went on. 

A summer tour was lined up after _Northern._ Alex and Delphine and Seb all got older. Robbie rarely saw Bob these days. Dominique kept trying to get him and Sara over for dinner, and Robbie, aware of the many tensions that would ensnare the table if it came to pass, kept pushing it off. 

Up at Shangri-La, fights still raged. Richard tried to kill himself a few more times. The great well that had produced all their acclaimed work finally ran dry. Out of rounds. Exhausted. 

Life went on. 

Women waltzed in and out of Shangri-La so often Robbie thought they’d reopened the back bordello. 

He’d be at the kitchen table early in the morning, already writing, and women came in from the bedrooms, drank all the coffee he made and stole the food and made eyes at him over the toaster. He’d avert glances, they’d slink back off to wherever they came from, and then in the afternoon, he’d catch Levon kissing some beauty and sending her off. Throwing her away. Never the same girl. 

Men never came to Shangri-La. With good reason. Robbie was sure they happened. Los Angeles wasn’t too far from Malibu, and Los Angeles was a big bad city. 

He’d complain to Dominique about the distracting promiscuity, and she’d kiss his cheek happily and laugh at what a straight-laced father he’d become. Between them, they called it “Shag”ri-La and thought themselves quite superior and funny. 

Life went on.

Sometimes Levon couldn’t get past being limp. No matter what either of them did. Robbie said it was fine—over embarrassed apologies and insistence it was the heroin—and went home tightly wound and absolutely certain something was wrong with him. That he’d finally gotten unexciting, boring, unpretty. Unimportant.

But life trundled on as it was wont to do. And most days Robbie had no choice than to go wherever it took them all. 

Los Angeles, June, 1969

“Hey, look at this!” 

They were in a West Hollywood supermarket. Home with the baby, Dominique had sent Robbie and Levon and Rick out to get groceries. Pushing the cart around aimlessly, they rolled past a magazine display. Levon stopped, snagged it off the rack, and shoved it in Robbie’s face.

“Would you look at that! Bob’s gonna be on the Johnny Cash Show.”

“There’s a Johnny Cash show?” 

“Says here there is.” Levon flipped it open. “Gonna be on next week.”

“Where?”

“Right here.” He pointed. Robbie leaned in and pushed his glasses back up. “On at seven.”

“Surely you’re not interested.”

“Thought _you_ might be.” 

“Put it back,” Robbie said, already annoyed and knowing where the conversation was headed. “Rick’s waiting in the car. Probably boiling up in there, and we still gotta get the milk and the bread and the fruit she wanted, and everything else.” He consulted the list. “C’mon, let’s go.”

He pushed the cart off. Levon trailed after him. 

“You know he was gonna be on?”

“No.” Robbie kept his eyes fixed ahead. “He didn’t tell me.” 

“Y’all still talk or anything?”

“Sometimes. He comes round the Saugerties house a few times a week for coffee or whatever.” Levon gave him some sort of side-eye. Robbie stared him down. “That’s _it._ Jesus, Dominique taught me how to make it some stupid Quebec way and he liked it.” 

“Bet he liked it.”

“Levon.” It surpassed chiding and went straight to anger. 

“You act like I don’t know _what_ happened. 'Cause I know.” 

“Well, I didn’t intend to hide it from you. I wasn’t under the impression—” Robbie lowered his voice. “—we were monogamous with each other, either.”

“Good. 'Cause we weren’t, and we ain’t now.”

“I’d like to think my daughter is evidence of that.” 

“How long was it going on before I left?” They began picking out the oranges and little baskets of strawberries. “Look, what else she got on the list?”

“Grapes, but don’t buy those,” Robbie said as Levon went to grab some. “They California ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t get them.”

“Why not?” 

“Because they aren’t paying the farm workers enough.” 

“Okay.”

They pushed on to the back of the store for milk. 

“It wasn’t going on _before_ you left,” Robbie finally said as they appraised the different bottles and cartons. “It happened _because_ you left.” Levon looked at him. “You left, and…” he sighed, and got the milk that satisfied him. He spent a generous amount of time arranging it in the cart, muttering to himself. Then he looked up. “You left me.”

“I left because you were _fucking_ him.”

“Keep your voice down!”

“Honey, this is a West Hollywood Ralphs.”

Robbie pushed on, trailing the back wall of the store. 

“No, I wasn’t _fucking_ him _before_ you left.” Barely a hiss, but Levon was so learned in his tendencies and their own language that he heard it easily. “That was after. I was heartbroken. Needed somebody.”

“And you picked him.”

“More like he picked me. We don’t do it anymore, if that’s what’s got you.”

“He went after you?”

“You think you’re hiding something or that he doesn’t notice because he’s always wearing those glasses and wandering off or high or wandering off while he’s high and then he’s cornering you and—”

Robbie stopped abruptly, caught himself. He turned red and pushed the cart off again. 

“Hey! What were you sayin’? Can’t just stop like that. Duke!” Levon raced in front of the cart. Robbie bumped it into his waist. 

“Move.”

“What’d he do?”

“Rick’s probably dead, we gotta go. We have everything.”

“What _happened?_ ” 

“Said I looked real sad. Said I looked lonely. I mean, he was right, wasn’t he?” Robbie lit a cigarette. “You left. For _some_ reason. You just couldn’t handle it.”

“They would’ve killed us. Fuckin' mob.”

“You broke my heart, Lee.”

“Hey, don’t you try to make this _my_ fault. That tour was a fucking war, and it wore me down. Couldn’t stand getting yelled at every night or having people rush the stage. Thought every night they were gonna kill your ass. Couldn’t watch it anymore. You and him.”

“Don’t even try to make this about me. Besides, we weren’t doing anything then.” 

“I didn’t know that.”

“So it was a misunderstanding.”

“Guess so.” 

Robbie passed him the cigarette. 

“What’d he do?”

“That’s absolutely none of your business. Wasn’t the second you got in that cab.”

“What he do? Touch you? Make you fuck him? Suck your cock? That’s mine, baby.”

“We are in _public._ ” Robbie’s eyes were wide.

“Robbie.”

“Kissed me….” He grabbed the cigarette back, smoked nervously, arms crossed and staring at his boots. “He kissed me. He did it because he said I looked sad. And I was. And he knew you weren’t even having a good time anyways. He really was alright with you leaving, didn’t hold it against you, I’m sure. He seemed kinda remorseful about it, actually.”

For a second, Levon looked cloudy-eyed and then something switched on.

“Duke, you _told_ him?”

“No!” Robbie had never heard someone sound so quietly hysterical. “No…” 

“You fucking liar.” 

They started moving again towards the front of the store. A girl with long brown hair, pretty and tan, smiled at Levon. He didn’t even notice. 

“I can’t believe you told him!”

“I didn’t want _to!_ Shit, you’ve seen him with the journalists. God, he knew before I’d even said a word. What was I supposed to say?”

“Could’ve denied it.”

“Oh, he would’ve seen right through it. I thought you didn’t care.” Robbie started loading the groceries onto the belt. “We’re talking about it right now, are we not?”

“But it’s different.”

“How?” Robbie turned his chin up defiantly. Levon handed him a bundle of bananas and a carton of eggs. “I told you, we don’t even do that anymore anyways. Quit it right after the tour ended.” 

“And I’m supposed to believe that?” Levon gave the cashier the money. They rolled out to the parking lot.

“Yes. I felt terrible about it after we got home and the tour ended. Wanted to apologize to you. For something. I don’t know...for doing it? Then Bob crashed his bike and that just made it all worse.” 

Rick saw them coming. He got out to help load the trunk, bitched about how long they’d taken, and how it was hot and he was sweating and tired, oblivious to the tension. 

When he was distracted, Robbie herded him to the backseat, and got the wheel. Levon slid into the passenger seat and they drove off. 

Silent on the drive home, and Rick wondered why they weren’t talking, and why Robbie batted Levon’s hand down when he tried to turn the radio on. And then how Levon turned to look out the window and draw away from the both of them. 

Quiet anger. A pot to boil over, something set to snap. But nobody said anything, and Rick didn’t understand what was so bad about a West Hollywood Ralphs on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. 

_“He left.” Robbie looked up at him with big eyes. On the verge of tears. “Last night. He’s gone.”_

_“Drove him to that. My fault.”_

_“No, no, he said it wasn’t the tour.”_

_“Neither did I.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“You're so sad,” Bob said, and he knelt. Robbie sat on the bed. A long spindly hand reached out to flick away his hair and touch, intently, the space between his brows. Two hands on his face, porcelain and soft, and Bob wielded that guitar like a gun through A Shau elephant grass, but his fingers were smooth. Thumbs swiped under Robbie’s eyes, wiping away tears that hadn’t fallen yet. “Sad-eyed thing you are.”_

_Robbie stared at him._

_“It’s not really about Sara. Never was. ‘Who among them do you think could resist you?’ Oh, it’s not her.” And his voice was barely a breath. “Always looking sad, since the day I met this sweet face of yours. Makes me so sad, too.”_

_Tears fell._

_“What makes you so sad? What got you crying like that? What hurt you?”_

_Everything. That’s the answer. Everything. From Jim to his mom to Emma on the banks of the river way back in West Helena, to the married woman who’d lain down in the field for him, her legs spread, and he’s only fourteen, a child, and things keep leaving, men who die before they can ever meet their own babies. People love to leave, don’t they?_

_“Break. No, it’s okay, Robbie, break for me, I got you. You miss him, I know.”_

_“Everything leaves.”_

_Robbie cried too hard and they fell to the floor, entwined. Bob was vicious, so mean, but now he unfurled for the sorrow._

_“It hurts.”_

_“I know, I know.”_

_Who was this? Not the man everyone else knew._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Don’t be.” Hushed against his hot neck, salt between their souls. “You aren’t the one who’s supposed to be sorry.”_

_He kept talking, unintelligible sweetness murmured over burning skin, and the tighter Robbie shook with pain the tighter he held on. And a warm mouth swallowed his cries, taking all his pain like nothing._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm adding an additional chapter because I planned my pacing incorrectly. (there's also an epilogue I'm kicking around, but who's to say...) Sorry the uploading is so irregular. College is hard. 
> 
> (TW, just to flag this chapter: it does get violent towards the end.)

Spring ‘74 

So, all the boys finally went West. _Moondog Matinee_ was born. Dominique grew again, with a third child, ready to be born in the summer of that year. 

In between all these beginnings, there was the night Levon nearly died. 

One brutal February night, somewhere in Michigan, in a hotel, back to their roots of loud parties and swinging women and Robbie roved for a silent spot of peace and quiet, batting people off, bumped up, shrugging away welcoming offers. 

_“I’ve got a wife, I’ve got a wife, married, two kids, no, I…”_

He’d spoken with both Bob and Levon earlier in the evening.

With Bob, burning passion of the past decade had mellowed into friendly discussion of work and children. Except Levon put Bob on the defensive sometimes. Something protective coming out. It made him hard to talk to. 

Then Robbie, unheeding the Bard’s sense of things, sidled over to Levon, lit his cigarette for him, and slipped a hand in his back pocket, covered well by the haze and shadow of the room. 

“Come see me in the night, yeah?” Robbie murmured. 

“You can’t make me do nothing.” But then they looked into each other's eyes for a long time and burst out laughing. “Sure, baby, I’ll come visit you. You even ready?”

“Do you doubt me? Doubt my…” Robbie raised his chin. “Doubt my ability?”

“You’re old now.”

“You’re older. Got more under your belt.”

“Speakin’ strictly experientially, yeah, I do.” 

And they both cracked up again. 

Bob watched them idly from across the room. He saw it, plain and clear, the hand that was slung casually around Levon’s waist, and how they both were so magnetically close. Learned in the subject of each other. Surveying this unimpressive room like kings, conquerors, arm in arm.

Then Robbie had sauntered off in those trim jeans and open shirt, cigarette dangling from his fingers, smiling, into the crowd. 

The world was upside down. 

The bathroom door was open. Robbie stood on the ceiling, fixing his hair in a mirror that was upside down, too. 

He moaned. Robbie turned. 

“You’re awake.” 

Levon’s head hung off the bed. He rolled over and pushed onto his elbows, head pounding. Then he vomited violently all over the bedcover and the carpet. 

“Shit.” Robbie ran to get the trash bin. 

“S’all on the floor.” Levon could barely see straight. The world was rippling, too hot and roiling. Robbie got the lip of the bin to his mouth, and more puke came up. 

Fingers thread his hair, letting him shake, until only burning bile was left.

“Water?”

“Yes.”

Robbie got a glass and a cool towel and patted at his face and neck. 

“You’re burning. No fever, just so hot. Mm...” Concerned, he rested a hand to Levon’s forehead. “Can you get your shirt off?”

Sort of. Levon tried, threw up even more. Robbie had to help him stand. 

First his boots, socks. Shirt unbuttoned. Pants dropped to his ankles, Robbie aiding him in gingerly stepping out each pant leg. His underwear. Completely bare now.

It was demeaning. A king playing footman. Just to make them all think they still had some power. Some control. Some worth in their Lord’s eyes. Robbie remained kneeling, and daringly, tenderly, he rose to kiss Levon’s soft prick, once. Then his thigh, knee cap, the knot of bone at the ankle, the top of his foot. No further wish or implication. Just reassurance of how they existed with each other.

Levon sat down on the bed, unsteady. The night raged outside the room. If Robbie opened the door, all that insanity would spill inside. Here, here, it was grim. Dour. The bedcover was sour, stained, and the light above the bathroom sink looked green. It was the only light on in the room. The rest came in the window, neon from across the street, crippled a bit by the rain on the glass. 

Like walking through a back alley, this room was. Something seedy and sideways. In the half-dark, Robbie looked porcelain, big-eyed, dollish. Freakish. Levon wondered if any of this was real. 

God, he was so warm, burning alive. 

Grasped, he lunged forward and threw up again. A few strands got on Robbie’s shirt and chest. 

“Shit.”

“S’okay. Keep going.” Robbie thumbed his cheek and eased it all out of him, until finally, he was finished, and wanted the water again. 

“What time is it?”

“Quarter to three.”

“They still up?”

“The Dylan machine never breaks down. They’re having a ball.”

“Shit,” he drank, “That’s vile.” 

“You took too much.”

“I’m fine.” 

“Nearly thought I was gonna have to raise you.”

“I’m _fine._ ” 

Levon pushed Robbie away. Unsure on his feet, but life waited for him in his roadkit. Reliable stuff. Not the gritty, muddled shit Richard had offered him earlier the night, when Robbie had disappeared through the haze. 

He unzipped it on the bed. Robbie watched, sad and quiet, arms crossed, vomit all down his front. 

“Lee.”

“Baby, _I know._ Hush.” 

Robbie sat next to him.

“Want you to be comfortable and okay and…” Bottom lip caught between his teeth, as he fussed. Teeth that had never quite pressed together perfectly, awkwardly endearing, the same way he sometimes appeared woeful, doe-eyed, on the verge of tears. 

When he wasn’t being spiteful. Or cold. He’d grown shadowed these days; something bad, dancing near dangerous. Then Robbie smiled at him with an adoration Levon had only seen reserved for Dominique. 

“Why you staring at me like that?” he twisted the barrel on.

“Because I can. Because,” Robbie stroked his face, “You’re here to stare at.”

“I thought I told you to quit the sappiness.” Looking down, half-ignoring him. Suddenly, Levon lost where he was and was unsure of what he’d wanted to say. He was not dying, nothing failing, but he was drifting. Incredibly tired, more exhausted than he had ever been before.

Robbie took hold of his jaw, and dressed him down again in the cold wet cloth. Then he wiped himself clean, too. “You with me?”

Levon undid the twist tie on the bag. It was both soft and heavy in his hand.

“I saw you talkin’ to Bob.”

“Yeah, we were,” Robbie whispered. “‘Bout our work and our kids and all that.” 

“That all?” Levon closed his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah, it was. Nothing else. There’s not much to talk about these days.” 

Levon heard him sigh. The crinkling of paper, the hollow slide of packaging, then a clicked lighter, and the dreamy smell of smoke. 

More sighing. Tired sounds. 

“Can I have some of that?”

Even within the darkness of his closed eyes, fingers slipped out—deft ones, one that had felt every inch of his body and spirit—and passed him the cigarette. He took it and drew deep breaths, like surfacing from underwater. A weight lifted.

“Are you nervous?” He opened his eyes and returned to his guilted task. Little bit in the spoon’s bowl. He went to the sink. “Hm?”

“Nervous ‘bout what?” 

Levon looked back at him. “Your new baby.”

“I guess I’m nervous about Dominique. Want her to be healthy and happy and want our baby to be that way, too.”

“She’s an incredibly strong person, Duke. And so are you. No reason y’all won’t have a perfect baby.”

“And you’re sure you’re okay with it?” 

A lighter was already on the counter. Levon grabbed it. “And why the fuck should it matter what I think?”

“Because you were there long before Dominique,” Robbie paused a fraction of a beat. “And anyone else. So I think it’s a fair question.”

“Don’t own your soul, Duke. I don’t care what you do.”

 _But you do. And sometimes, I wish you did care. Show me I matter._

The rest was easy. Old habits. Like breathing. Levon got the tourniquet and lay down on the bed. Robbie undressed, crawled close to him and drew the covers up, and they were naked together, beautifully woven in each other’s heat and limbs. 

“You died.”

“No.”

Robbie kissed him on the mouth, then pecked his nose.

“Ugh, you don’t wanna be doin’ that, baby. I can’t taste good.”

“I don’t care. You’re alive. That’s what matters.” Robbie showered him with kisses on his cheeks and temples and between his brows and on each closed eyelid and corners of his mouth, left then right, up in hollow under his bottom lip. In a flood of whispers, quiet flutterings, “You died, you died, you died…”

Repeated, whispered, like some prayer, some sad admittance sung over his skin.

“You left me,” was his final confession. And they kissed like fire. 

Gently, when he could no longer breathe, Levon laid a hand to Robbie’s chest and pushed him back. 

“You did not have a pulse. I thought you were asleep, and I went to wake you up and love you and there was absolutely nothing fucking there.”

“I’m alive now, ain’t I?”

For a long moment, they lay in silence, shuddering together. The room was so quiet; in the hallway the night raged on like war. Here, too, something had been waged. Except lines here were unclear. Brother pitted against brother. Romantic death. Robbie didn’t know how long such conflict could rumble on, underneath the band. 

Slowly, Robbie took Levon’s hand, and held it in his own. Rested his head on Levon’s chest to hear it's reassuring beat. 

“My Virgil Caine...he was meant for you, you know. When I wrote him.” 

“You had me sing him, yes.”

“Bigger than that,” Robbie murmured. “Mythic.”

“Maybe.”

“Got you going into battle, raising Cain. Being strong.” 

“Possibly your best trick of words there, I’ll admit.”

“My Virgil,” Robbie repeated, transfixed, stroking Levon’s chest and staring up at him. “Love you.”

“Love you, too. Hold this, could you?” Levon passed him the needle. Robbie held it by the barrel gingerly, while he watched Levon yank the tourniquet around his arm. “Thank you, Duke. You’re still a wonder.”

“Would you be saying that outside of this bed?”

They had existed together for many years, edging closer to two decades than not, in various iterations and times of life and love and adversity. Adversity at them and between them, but mostly love, and with great courage and near blunt force, Robbie asked,

“Do you really love me?”

“What?”

“Do you love me?”

Silence. Then, 

“Yes, Duke. I don’t like you no more, but I love you like hell.”

A nose to his chest. Lips followed, and the soft press of high cheekbone to his ribs. 

“Okay. Thank you. S’honest.”

“I would never lie to you, baby. Wouldn’t ever.”

 _But you have before,_ and Robbie pulled his face away before Levon could feel the cold slide of tears on his stomach. 

A sharp rapping came upon the bedroom door, and they both jolted. Then a loud drunk laugh, unidentifiable, and the caller, whoever it was, melted away, passing over them, here in their own night. 

“You think they’ll ever stop?” Robbie asked quietly. Those sounds used to excite him. They were thrilling, a deafening proposition of all that existed outside Toronto. Now, they were the sounds of opulent embarrassment, ill-thinking. Death. 

Dominique sometimes told him that she woke at night to sounds of car crashes with an ache low in her belly. Remnants of a different time, in Woodstock, when Richard nearly killed her and Alexandra, yet unknown to the world. 

_Get out of there, Robbie. Get out,_ she’d urge. Each time he held his daughters and kissed their dark heads and felt their little fingers clutch at his own callused ones. _Get out,_ mon coeur. _If you love them, leave it all._

Now Levon had almost done the leaving for him. It was something to consider. 

“No,” Levon said. “Nah, they won’t. Long as we’re here to help ‘em all along.”

“Big words coming from you.”

Neither dared to speak above a whisper.

“Then get me off this train, baby. That’ll do it.”

“You’re lying on the tracks, if anything.”

“Then stop her.” 

“I wish I could. Do you want me to?”

As if to answer, Levon gently kissed Robbie’s cheek. He took the barrel back, yanked the tourniquet taut with his teeth, prodded at his arm with rough fingers. Then, the needle went in, and Robbie looked away. 

“Ask me tomorrow, huh? That’s a better time…” He sounded so close to sleep now, carelessly pressing into Robbie’s heat. 

“G’night, Duke.”

“G’night, Lee. Love you.”

“I love you, too.” 

Narcan on the bedside. Robbie fumbled for it blindly, still chest to warm chest with his great Levon. 

Just in case, in case. He’d practiced putting it together a hundred times at home. 

When Dominique wouldn’t catch him, never thinking he’d actually have to do it. Standing in the bathroom, eying down his own pitiful alarming preparations in the mirror while Delphine crawled around on the bedroom floor through the open doorway, singing for her daddy. 

He’d come into the bedroom after a shower to find Levon’s head hanging off the edge of the bed, and Levon asleep and hardly breathing. 

Right sleeve rolled down, left rolled up, and the rest wasn’t hard to figure out. 

Robbie had shaken his shoulder. Limp. Shaken him again. And still nothing moved, and when Robbie bent to his chest and listened and then pressed fingers to neck, slotted up under the jawbone, searching for a pulse. 

Keeping a beat, every night behind the kit, keeping every beat but his own. 

Nothing. 

Then, with a rough wheeze, gagging, his chest had started moving again, and Robbie had cried pitiful tears of relief. 

Now, the world outside their low room continued, and Levon had retreated to his pleasure, dropping out, numb, and how could one be so naked, in the arms of another and feel so alone and drowning? 

Robbie watched him for another second, then turned his head back up to the ceiling. There was a crack, a little split, a broken part, that ran from the window frame to the center of the ceiling. How long before it broke entirely? Before the whole thing caved and went down? Could that even happen? He didn’t know. 

“I didn’t want it that way,” he whispered. Still staring at the ceiling, quiver in his lip and waiting for the view to get wet and break apart. “I never told you that. Wasn’t your fault, really, but...it wasn’t how I wanted it.”

Silence answered. The source of all his heartache was fast asleep. 

“Wanted to make you happy, give you all of it. But…”

He hated. Hated Levon for making him do it the way he did, hated himself for giving over, hated himself for caring. Who cared? Wasn’t special, wasn’t clean and untouched and holy like he’d pretended it to be. He’d lain others down instead of being laid down himself. Who the fuck cared? 

There was more to confess in the night. More to say. But Robbie couldn’t, because the tears flowed then, couldn’t speak because he was crying. Weeping for himself and mourning the loss of what hadn’t yet died, but was sure to do so in time. 

Summer, Los Angeles, 1975

“It worries me.”

Robbie flipped his blinker and swung the car left.

“Huh?” Levon was barely listening. 

“I said,” Robbie cast him a quick glance, “I don’t like it.”

Levon lit a cigarette. “Well, now worrying about something and not liking it are different. What don’t ya like?” 

Robbie turned his head this way and that. They reached the light at the base of the mount that curled up into the Canyon. High-hung-red met headlights, and when Robbie turned his head to give Levon a real stare, all the glow bounced off his glasses, couldn’t see his eyes. Just round flaming rings. 

“I wanna get off the road.” They drove on. “How many times do I have to bring it up? I know we got the tour this summer, and that’s just what it is. Would’ve put my foot down on that one, but I don’t have final say—”

“Oh, aren’t you just hilarious.”

“Somebody’s gonna get really hurt. And it worries me.” He paused. “We can’t get shit done lately. Rick’s never around, Richard can barely walk anymore. You sleep all the time.”  
Levon blew a stream of smoke out the window. He let his hand hang off the lip. “Nothin’ wrong if I’m tired.”

“Yeah, but why are you tired?”

Dark rushes of the Malibu night slipped past. They left it low to simmer. 

Robbie tapped the steering wheel, impatient with the endless Canyon road, the little patch of pavement illuminated before it raced to meet the car and get ground up under her tires. The tapping was incessant, annoying. Levon sank lower in his seat. 

A hare raced out of the brush from the left. Robbie barely stopped in time. 

The car screeched to a halt, sent them forward and back again with a jerk. Levon’s cigarette fell. He went scrabbling with his bootheel to stamp it out.

“Jesus fucking Christ, baby. You nearly killed us.” 

The hare hopped off. With caution and a shake in his hands, Robbie got the car going again. Out here in the night, where you couldn’t see past the dusk, they danced with death. 

“ _Sorry._ ” He clenched his teeth and readjusted his glasses. “I’ll make sure to stop with more grace next time.”

“Oh, no, don’t you pull that shit with me,” Levon said. “Nah, you ain’t doing that tonight.”

Still the night rushed by. The moon hung low, bright above the road, guiding, swollen, maternal. Dominique was waiting for him, at home, with his three children, and he was here, driving home his rocks-off junkie, nearly hitting hare, weaving in and out of who he was, who he cared for, who cared for him.

“It needs to stop.”

“You stop.” 

“No, but I’m worried. I’m telling you this out of worry, and brotherhood, and love—” 

“Shut up. Don’t talk about it like that.”

“I just meant—” 

“I don’t _care_ about what you think you meant. I know what you meant, and I’m telling you to shut up. It ain’t like that.”

They reached Shangri-La. Robbie parked the car and turned the engine off. He rolled his own window down, let the heat envelop them like that carnal burning-up waltz they loved to dance. The crickets whirred, and far off, coyotes howled. 

“I…” He was tapping the steering wheel again. “I _love_ this.” His hands turned to claws, pulling down from his heart, gripped with it. “I love this, here, this place, and you, and Rick and Garth and Richard and everybody. I loved Big Pink, too, it just was all so perfect. And so when I see you doing shit to yourself like that, I—”

“Doing what?” Levon leaned towards Robbie, defiant, squaring down his mate before the mount. “What am I doing, baby? It’s insulting having to talk about this with you, you know. Would’ve thought you trusted me.”

“I want to,” Robbie regained himself. “I really do.”

“But you don’t.”

“Because I don’t think you can handle it. I think you're in way over your head. In fact, I _know_ you are.” 

Levon started uncuffing his shirt. He’d performed this charade before. Years ago, at Big Pink, a night no different than this one. As if it had worked then. He thrust his arm out. 

“See! Nothing. I ain’t got a scratch or scab or fucking nothing. Take a long good look, if you want. Calling me a liar…nearly fucking getting me killed and then saying I’m doing it myself.”

“I didn’t _see_ the rabbit. I’m sorry.” 

“It was a hare.” Levon rolled his sleeve back down and yanked it tight toward his wrist with indignation. 

“Can I see your other arm?” 

“No!” He was incredulous. “I’m doing just fine. Couple of old marks, I suppose. But that’s old, baby, old shit.” 

“I hate it when you lie to me.”

“You get me in this car—” A night this hot, as swamped up as the old Delta, shoved and pushed them to fusion. “You get me in this car! You get me here all because you wanna insult me and call me a liar and—”

“Because you are _lying_ to me! Because you’re going to all this to prove you’re telling the truth and it’s embarrassing, because we both know it’s a fucking lie. You’re not clean!”

“Neither are you! Neither are you!” Levon slammed on the dashboard with his hand. “Don’t fucking pin all this shit on me just because you feel guilty about it and need someone   
else taking the blame.”

“You are going to _kill_ yourself! You _have!_ ” The night was so dark. “You’re gonna kill yourself and leave Amy behind. Isn’t that what you’re always fucking telling me about? The way you’re acting is an embarrassment. There’s other people hanging around and what one of us does speaks for all of us!” 

“Then stop being such a fuckin’ bitch all the time!”

“I am so _tired._ And I can’t do this anymore. Can’t force our big dream anymore. It’s like losing your mind. You are _killing_ me!”

Levon laughed. “ _Our_ dream? Baby, this ain’t been our dream for a long time.”

“We _wanted_ this! Ever since Fayetteville. And you’re throwing it away. Being ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful? You…” he could barely form words. “You’re the most conceited cunt I’ve ever met, Jesus Christ. All you do is _control_ and _control_ and—”

“Because I can’t get you to do _anything_ anymore!”

“You gotta make every fucking thing about you, make all of it yours! And for what? Just to fucking prove yourself?”

“You don’t do _anything!_ I have to beat you out of bed cause you’re too fucked up to—”

“Just to fucking prove you’re worth something! Tell me, what’s it like waking up every day and knowing you were an accident?”

“Stop _killing_ yourself. I sweat and bleed for you all every day—

“I hate you.”

“I got albums to make—”

“ _You?_ ”

“—and I got Dominique and three kids and a house and none of us can have shit if we don’t get paid. So if you wanna go kill yourself at the expense of my family—” 

Robbie’s face slammed into the steering wheel. Levon shoved him down once, twice. Dense, wet sounding. Broad hands knotted in his hair. Down a third time. The car parked low in the shadows, hemmed in by the night. Someone inside getting beat, like a murder. 

A fourth attempt at collision, but Robbie got his hands up in time and tried to brace himself. His hands slid on the wheel.

Levon let go as quickly as he’d struck. Robbie heard someone crying. He couldn’t see. His glasses were by the pedals, smashed. 

“Please…” Robbie put his hands up to his face, but kept them off the skin, like if he touched himself he’d burn. “Please stop…” 

_Where is he now? Home. Toronto. Scarborough Bluffs. And Jim’s above him. Spluttering. Drunk. Splitting skin on a son who committed no crime and deserved no beating._

“Stop...I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I—” 

Levon got out of the car. “I’m not a fucking junkie. Got that?” 

When Robbie didn’t say anything, hands still aloft, squinting through night and fringe and poor eyesight and wet red, Levon hit the frame of the car with his fist. 

“ _Got that?_ ”

Robbie nodded. Numb, dumb, compliant, a whipped dog that knew it was better to heel than bay. 

The porch light came on. 

“So no more sniffing around or mouthing off about whatever happens, yeah?”

Another nod. 

“Cause I wouldn’t do that to you, baby! Wouldn’t do that to the band, you know? That’d be irresponsible, is what it would be, and all that, knowing how much you’re relying on it…” 

He looked back toward the house, at the shape moving behind the screen door. Some girl, or maybe Libby, waiting for him. His insincerity was a cold death. A masquerade of compliance and compassion, and then Robbie realized that the crying was coming from his own mouth. 

Levon leaned closer. 

“You own nothing, you got that? We got a couple of good songs and some good memories. And we had fun, I know. But, uh…” and he inched closer still, smiling, cold. “Men marry women for their pussies and I keep you in this band for yours. I could have you out on the streets in a second. You understand.” 

He wouldn’t look away; Robbie couldn’t imagine what looked back.

Levon patted the old girl’s frame. He lit a second cigarette. Had a draw, surveyed the murky night out over the ocean and the glittering coast lights below. Then he turned back, smiling gently.

“G’night, then, Duke.” 

He melted off, past the shed, under the porch light, shuffling up the back steps, meeting the girl at the door and kissing her. Robbie watched him go the whole time. The screen door closed with a _thwack_.

Then it was only him and the empty car, her windows still open. Sitting in a night that was the darkest it had ever been, and now the sun had set fully and the desert was cold.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are. The end! I do have an epilogue in the works right now, but it's not presently finished, and I'd hate to promise something I can't deliver. But hopefully, I will have it done soon and will just add it on, if you all are interested. Thank you all so much for reading and sticking around! 
> 
> (also, to flag, TW: SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, ideation, (quite possibly a failed attempt))

May 1978

Robbie went to see _The Last Waltz._

As a producer, he’d seen it in bits and pieces, fits and starts, on the cutting room floor, late nights with Marty. But never as a whole film. 

Marty asked him if they wanted to watch the final project together. Robbie politely declined. _The Last Waltz_ was a tribute to the Band, his first child, long before his daughters and son. However close Marty got, he wouldn’t understand. Not really. 

“Ticket for _The Last Waltz_ , please.”

“Which one?” The attendant wasn’t much older than Robbie had been when he’d gone down to Arkansas almost twenty years ago. He looked like he didn't want to be here, in a sweltering booth on a hot day, watching Hollywood traffic zip past. Well, Robbie didn’t want to be anywhere anymore. Too bad. 

“ _The Last Waltz._ ”

“Hm?”

“The concert one.” 

“Two bucks.”

Robbie got out his wallet and handed the money over. 

The kid took it and said, “You look familiar.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” And he headed inside. 

***   
“Um,” Robbie fumbled. “Do you want me to plug that in there?”

“Yeah, let’s do it again.”

“The Band has been together sixteen years, together on the road. We did eight years in bars, dives, dance halls. Eight years of concerts, stadiums, arenas.” 

A close-up on his face. He looks very tired. 

“We gave our final concert. The _Band’s_ final concert. We call it _The Last Waltz._ ”

What a joy that night had been. 

What anxiety. 

What sadness. 

Robbie saw it on his own face high up in a dark Hollywood theater. He’d picked a seat in the back, inconspicuous, wearing his new glasses to see and pretty sure no one would notice a thing. He got his boots up on the empty seat in front of him and let it overtake him. 

Oh, how pretty Levon is. 

Up there on the screen, flushed, sweating, rugged. He holds the whole thing together, anchors this great soul they’ve been trying for years to tame.

He sings like every breath and beat is his last, and when he smiles, dawn breaks.

That man, up there, is the one Robbie fell for many years ago, as a boy. They are both older now, much older, but that one November night is resurrection. More than once, Robbie had to look away from the screen, overwhelmed.

_“Who’s Bessie, Robbie?”_

_They asked a lot. What hot Louisiana snatch was he getting and not sharing with the rest of them? Robbie wondered how they were so clueless._

_“Bessie,” Robbie said one day around the Big Pink kitchen table, “is that pretty thing you keep fucking despite having a perfectly good wife at home. The road has all kinds of delights, gentleman. Go get whatever you want.”_

_“You’re bullshitting us.”_

_“You asked.”_

_“And you bullshit us.”_

_“Bessie’s redemption, then. That’s what she is. Salvation.”_

_Under the table, he bumped Levon’s shin with his shoe. Over the chatter, the comforting clatter of flicking lighters, and coffee cups sliding over formica, and forks on ceramic, the sound of domesticity, he and Levon grinned at one another, beamed, and wondered how they’d ever gotten so lucky._

“And the week went on and it was a little depressing, and it was especially depressing because we didn’t have _any_ money. No dough.”

“At one point,” Rick chimes in, “we had no more food money.”

“It got to the point where, coming from Canada, we had these overcoats, big overcoats with pockets, and we had a little routine…”

They have a good laugh about it on screen.

“Y'all come back!” Rick drawls, and Robbie and Richard burst out laughing. 

They could laugh about it now. Now they all had more money than they knew what to do with. They bought and crashed cars and then bought them again and crashed them again and bought them again. In the past month, Robbie had spent more money on coke than anything for his own three children. It was obscene, and yet they kept laughing. 

Texas, 1963 

They lay curled together on the stage of the Skyline Lounge. Five bodies huddled close against the chill, under a jagged absence of roof. Above: plains of stars, endless. 

A time when all they were was kept between them and in their road cases they guarded like treasure, and nothing else as proof of who they were or what they could stake and claim. The only thing they owned was movement. 

“Lee.”

Half-awake, Levon reached out, between them, low, hidden, to take Robbie’s hand. 

“Yes, baby?”

“I’m so hungry.”

“Can’t do that here. Not right now.” He yawned.

“No, Levon, look.”

Levon cracked an eye open. Robbie hiked his shirt up, took Levon’s hand and gently pressed it to his stomach. Then he slid it over his ribs. 

“I’m so hungry. Please…” Brown eyes were filled with tears.

Levon kept a hand on his ribs.

“I feel like I’m gonna faint all the time, and…”

“Woah,” Levon cut in, but Robbie had already begun to cry. “Woah, baby, hold on.”

“I wanna go home. I can’t do this anymore. I wanna go. I want my mom.”

Barely twenty and looking like this. Crippled and crying.

“C’mere, here, here, baby, come close.” Levon pulled Robbie against his chest. He stroked his hair. “Here, wait, I think I got some bread.” And sure enough, in his one traveling bag, tucked between pairs of pants, wrapped up in a paper napkin, were a few remaining slices of bread. He’d stashed it a few days ago, when they added up their stolen goods and divided them again. Filched an extra slice or two when no one was looking. 

“Just don’t tell anybody,” and he held a finger to Robbie’s lips. Robbie kissed the finger instead and then stuffed back the bread so fast Levon worried he’d choke. “It’s stale as hell.”

“I don’t care,” Robbie said.

“Here,” Levon lit him a cigarette. Then he swiped Robbie’s tears from his cheeks.

“Nah. You only got a few left.”

“Baby, if I only had a single breath left, I’d give it to you. Kiss it into you.”

Robbie raised his head from their nest to see if anyone else was awake. Satisfied, he lowered himself and sunk back into his lover. 

“Don’t be sappy,” he sniffled.

“Can’t help it with you.” He passed Robbie the cigarette. “One day,” he started, and then stopped, looking at the sky covered in stars, more light places than dark, and feeling the weight and warmth of another body close to his. “One day we’re gonna get out here , places like these, and we’ll never go hungry and have a bed every night, and never have to steal or cheat or beg, or any of that.”

“You believe that?”

“Sure. I have to. It’s the big dream, baby. What we gotta fight for.”

“You’re a soldier, then,” Robbie said sincerely, getting a hand on Levon’s chest. “Fighting…” He reached up to wind a short lock of Levon’s hair through his fingers, admiring him, hardly able to believe he got to touch him and kiss him. 

America had so many pretty girls, but when Levon said “baby”, he meant Robbie. His Robbie. Not some throwaway in a town no different than the hundreds behind them and hundreds ahead.

_This whole world and I get to be yours. You picked me. What wonder is this?_

“You gotta fight, too,” Levon said gently.

“I know.” Robbie still felt the salt on his skin. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Just keep fightin’. They knock you down, you get back up, they knock you down again, and you give ‘em the meanest left hook you can. Uppercut ‘em,” and in a flash, he whipped a fist up, nestled right under Robbie’s chin, but it never made contact, hovering an inch away. 

Robbie flinched anyways, and then started laughing.

“Agh, don’t hit me!” he giggled into Levon’s chest. 

“Oh, sugar, I never could.” He pouted with concern. “Still hungry?”

“Mmm…” Quiet noises against his shirt. “Always am. Always am, on this damn road. S’okay for now. Thank you.”

“Of course.” He kept stroking Robbie’s hair until Robbie came to rest, soothed. “Anything for you, no question.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yes,” Levon whispered back. “Yes, yes, yes, forever.”

“Forever.”

***

“The road was our school. It gave us a sense of survival. It taught us all we know. There’s not much left that we can really take from the road. We’ve had our share. Or maybe it’s just superstitious.”

“Superstitious in what way?”

“You know, you can press your luck. The road has taken a lot of the great ones. Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis.” 

He looks down, and says, “It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.”

“It is, isn’t it?” 

“No question about it.” Robbie smiles. Then as quickly as the smile comes, it disappears. And he looks down again, afraid that if he bears his face any longer, defiantly unconvincingly happy, he’ll start crying.

“So you’re on the road,” Marty began.

“Yes.”

“And, uh,” he laughed, “Strangest thing that’s happened to you?”

Robbie laughed, too, and their amusement mingled together in salacious understanding. 

“Strangest how?” Robbie asked. He lit a cigarette. “Like, you know,” more laughter, “ _fun?_ ”

“I asked you.”

What a question. Robbie snickered, and stared past the camera, first at Marty and then at an empty spot on the wall. They’d been on the road a long time, and he had a long list of stories. 

That time Andy called the Chelsea and asked for Edie, and Robbie had to choke out “I haven’t seen her around,” because the girl in question was on her knees and had him halfway down her throat. 

A girl from Texas who was more silicone than flesh, and let him and Levon double-team her after a show and late into the morning.

Drug busts, and a couple of shows where he was so knocked out it took all he had to keep from collapsing and vomiting all over himself and the stage. Levon liked to drag him off to some dark closet or corner backstage, suck him, snort a few lines from root to tip. Or eat him out and then find some pretty _creative_ ways of getting coke into him. 

There were other things Robbie was less willing to discuss, as if he was willing to discuss any of the first memories. That time Levon had shaken him awake on the Shangri-La couch in a panic, shouting his head off, because somehow, some way, in the night, Richard had lit a shirtsleeve on fire and was just standing in the front yard, watching the flame rise to his shoulder, empty-eyed. 

Bob had nearly drowned in the tub. Robbie wouldn’t talk about that; everyone already knew that. He speculated, too, that the motor crash wasn’t as accidental as it might’ve seemed. 

_One drag. No faster than Rick’s bow on the fiddle._

_It glitters and winks so pretty against his skin. And then he can go off into whatever kingdom some had promised him. Or darkness. Have some of that great rest he hadn’t gotten since he was a child._

_His reflection stares back at him in Levon’s bathroom mirror. 1975. Shangri-La. Autumn. When things die. A tired sad pitiful monster stares back at him, too exhausted to protest._

_“Say something. Fucking say something. Interject. Stop me. Please, I’m begging you, I don’t wanna do it…”_

_Whispering to himself. Battle of wills. He fights, and it fights back. He doesn’t want to sleep, but he’s so so tired, just a quick rest. Won’t even be around to know he’s out for good._

_“Hey baby—”_

“Don’t _come in!” he shouts. A live wire. Too jumpy these days, Levon creeping up makes him want to hide. Big wet tears spring up, and his reflection blurs. He blinks, so he can see and keeps staring himself down mercilessly. “Don’t open that door, Levon. Levon, you hear me?”_

_“Okay. Jesus. But it’s Dominique calling. She kept ringing ‘till I answered.” He waits on the other side of the door, halfway up from a heroin haze. “She says, uh, something ‘bout you picking up Alex on the way home.”_

_Razor back in the medicine cabinet, crowded next to a few vials of coke, a bunch of orange pill bottles, Vicodin that’s definitely not prescribed for any real condition._

_Too many are reliant now, too many, too much, too…_

“There was this poker game,” Robbie settled on. “This poker game that we tried to rob.”

Marty laughed. “Tell me about that.”

“So there’s this poker game. And we’re on the road down South, and we’re completely outta money, right? So we get this bright idea to rob a poker game. We knew it was gonna take place this one night, and Levon thought it would be a good idea…” 

“You got ‘em?” Rick sucked on a cigarette.

In the evening, the five of them stood outside their two motel rooms, doors opening, and shuffling and stammering, back and forth from room to room, unsure of what to do with themselves. 

“Have I _got_ ‘em.” Levon laughed. “Sugar, ‘course I got ‘em.” He chucked Rick’s chin. 

Never had Robbie seen him so confidently elated. Smooth and fluid, energetic but never nervous, never stumbling. Just perfectly in charge and sure of his capabilities and the capabilities of those around him.

To see him touch Rick, however, accompanied with an endearment, irritated him. Rick, too, seemed a bit affronted, for he leaned back and narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the car. 

“You got the masks, too?” Richard asked. He bummed the half-smoked cigarette off Rick. Robbie, who was aimlessly hanging around the car’s trunk, saw Garth sitting on the bed, stoic and looking disappointed with the frenzy outside. 

“ _Yes,_ ” Levon said. “Y’all just don’t trust me, do you?”

“Oh, we do,” Rick said. “Except we can’t really afford right now to have anything go wrong.”

“And if something goes wrong,” Richard added, “it’s _your_ fault. You’re the one so hell bent on taking charge. Which is _fine,_ ” he said quickly. “It’s fine. Except we’re counting on you to do this.”

“And not Duke over there?” 

“Look at him.” Rick pointed with the cigarette. “White as a sheet.”

“Oh, hush up, he’s fine. Got the masks right here.” He tossed the sock at Robbie, who caught it with a gasp. “Get in.”

“This is such a bad idea,” Richard said. He and Rick watched them, shoulder to shoulder, dark heads stark against the powder blue sky. The moon rose high above the little two-story stucco building, and at the horizon line, the world was rosy pink.

“Hell yeah, it’s a horrible idea,” Rick agreed. Except when Levon and Robbie got into the car, one far less confident than the other, they cheered and whooped and hollered.

The car had hardly pulled onto the road when a hand snuck over and gently rubbed Robbie’s thigh.

“How ya doing, baby?”

“Good.”

“Don’t sound too good.”

“No, I’m fine,” Robbie said in what he hoped was a convincing tone. “You’re here with me. That’s all I need.”

“Ah, if life were that easy.”

“If life were easy, we wouldn’t have to be doing this.”

“Are you complainin'?”

“No, just commenting.”

“You really were the best choice for this.” Levon rubbed higher on Robbie’s thigh, and then slipped a hand between his legs, along the denim’s inseam. “Christ, you’re getting thin.”

“I’m starving,” Robbie said. “Haven’t eaten in hardly two, three days. S’why we’re doing this, eh?” Outside, the land flew past: short, isolated buildings, a dry heat, and a darkening sky. Robbie watched it go, meditatively. Then the hand became insistent and cupped his crotch. He moaned, drawn back into time. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Levon hummed. Both hands on the steering wheel again. He turned left. “You’re too good for me, baby. See, the others would’ve bitched about this if they were in your position.”

“I don’t think any of them are in _my_ position. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Rick’s not too bad looking, don’t you think? Really growing into himself.”

“What are you saying?” Robbie curled a tighter hand around the sock mask. His palms were clammy, and the last thing he wanted to do was put a stifling cloth over his head. 

“You’ve never thought about it? Once or twice?”

“Thought about what?”

“How Rick’s a bit pretty.”

“No,” Robbie said. Then, “I mean, he’s....he’s not bad looking. He’s…I don’t know the word.”

“Pretty. That’s the word.” Levon burst out laughing. 

“You’re speeding.”

“Am I?” He seemed genuinely surprised, and slowed down. 

“ _Yes._ ” Robbie’s stomach kept knotting itself. 

Levon paid his nerves no mind. “Ever think about him?”

“Ew, no,” Robbie said, understanding. “Where’s your head at?” 

“Not _seriously_. Just something nice to look at.”

“He’s not an object.”

“We could take him in our bed. Imagine it, baby. Him between us. Loving us. We take him at the same time. Think he’d swing that way?”

“You’re completely rotten,” Robbie said. “That’s perverted, you know that?”

“Some would say _we’re_ perverted.” 

Robbie glowered at him. He scratched his ankle; his whole body itched. He rested his chin on the window frame. His nose hit the glass. “You got a smoke?”

“Last one,” Levon said, shaking the pack. Too dark now to see, and he switched the headlights on. Robbie took the pack without looking. Then he shoved it in his jacket pocket. 

“I’m either gonna want it when I’m in a good mood later, or when they’re booking us.”

“They ain’t gonna do that.”

“This could go _horribly_ wrong, you know that, right? ,em>Awful. Tragically bad.”

“But it won’t.”

“Who says?”

“I do, baby. You trust me? You’ve trusted me before. Given me so much. Given me everything.” 

Levon pulled to the side of the road. No cars passed, and the land had settled to quiet. 

“So,” he reached into the glove compartment, pulled out the two guns and set them on the seat. Robbie felt ill. “You remember how to use it?”

A silent nod.

Levon smiled wickedly and bent himself forward, nosing at the button on Robbie’s jeans. “Don’t worry, we won’t have to shoot ‘em. Just gotta make it all look good. I like handling this better.” He opened his mouth around the denim. 

“No, don’t.” Already half-hard, tingling low before the ache set in. 

“I wanna suck it. No, honey, you’ll like it.”

“But,” stuck between the panic of getting caught and the anxiety of the night’s robbery, breathing too fast, “Ohh…” and he moaned when his jeans were unzipped and he was enveloped in the heat and love of Levon’s mouth, already undone. He scrabbled for purchase with his shoes and braced a flat palm on the side window, tensing his whole frame to stave back an embarrassingly fast-approaching end.

“Shit, you’re gonna make me come.”

Levon pulled off and sucked his balls instead. “Not yet, sugar. _No._ ” 

“Oh my God,” Robbie closed his eyes when Levon suckled on the head. “Yes, right there.”

“You like that, baby?” He tongued the slit, and Robbie whimpered. “Ow...ow, baby, ease up…”

Robbie had grabbed Levon’s shoulder, pushing back the collar to touch bare skin, digging his nails in. 

“Baby, I’m gonna bleed.”

A car shot down the road. Robbie attempted to duck lower into the seat, headlights painting his face for a split second. Levon laughed and kissed his thighs. 

“You scared?”

“Yes.” Too enslaved by his needs to lie.

“Scared about getting caught? Or having somebody see you with your cock in my mouth? Draining you dry? Getting caught with your legs spread, just _begging_ me to fuck you.”

“ _Levon._ ” Pleading, tinged with insanity at the edges, drunk with need. 

Levon spat into his hand, reached into Robbie’s pants, nudging past cock and balls, and then, with little ceremony, slipped his fingers inside. 

“ _Ohh..._ ” Surprised and breathy with lust. 

Fingers curled in and out, deep and searching, until they found the tender spot in question and Robbie groaned. 

“You like bein’ scared. You were already half hard when we started. You _love_ bein’ scared.”

“No.”

“‘Cause if something’s scaring you, that means something bad could happen, and I think you like that. So damn controlling and used to getting your way. You like taking your hands off the wheel. Not knowing what could happen. You love the anxiety. The bein' scared. That's painful, you know.” He started sucking Robbie’s neck, licking the shell of his ear, biting the lobe. “Oh, but you like it.” He laughed to himself. “Never would’ve guessed that, baby. We’re gonna have to try that out, then.”

“ _Lee._ ” It was a pitiful mewl. A plea.

“Nah, baby, you can’t beg. I mean, I like you beggin’, but it ain’t gonna make me do anything.” Then, struck, he stopped completely and stared at Robbie intently. “Would you let me hurt you?”

Robbie’s eyes widened. 

Levon drove his fingers in again, prompting a broken moan.

“Ahh…” Sing-song and satisfied. Feel around in the dark until you find what you’re looking for. “ _Got you._ ”

He held onto Robbie’s shoulder, and bit the skin, first with idle pressure, then harder, judging what was needed based on the sounds coming from Robbie’s mouth, until finally, like a broken dam, he bit hard enough and tasted blood. 

“ _Oww_ …” A cry of pain that melted off into an aroused moan. 

Not enough time to touch back to Earth, recalibrate, and Levon stormed him.

“Would you die for me?”

Robbie was panting, looking out the window again, shining with sweat.

“Jaime, would you die for me?”

“ _Baby._ ” Out of breath, still shocked from the pain. His hand was tight in Levon’s hair. 

“Answer me.”

“ _Yes._ ” 

“You would?”

“Yes, yes. For you, yes, if that’s what you want. Baby, I would. Honey, you know I’d die for you.”

“Why? Tell me why.”

“Because I love you. Because you’re my best friend, and if you want me to die for you, I will.” Tears on his lashes, looking heavenward. 

“Unconditionally?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, honey, that’s real. Thank you.”

And then, satisfied, with both Robbie’s admission and his unraveling submission, Levon sucked him again, blissfully.

Robbie never even thought to ask him the same.

***

“Okay, you ready? I’m gonna hand it to you now. You don’t need to pull it until we go in. An’ you got your mask?”

“Yes.” Robbie zipped his pants up.

“Good. So, I’ll go in first. You follow. We been over this, you know it.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a good boy like that. Good listener.” 

Robbie blushed. “And if something goes bad?”

“It ain’t gonna go bad. But if it does, then get out of there. Just get out. As fast as you can.” 

“Like if the cops come?”

“The cops ain’t gonna come. It’s an illegal game.”

“Oh... _oh._ ” 

“Oh, it ain’t gonna go bad, baby. Baby, look at me,” and he nudged Robbie’s chin with his thumb. Deep brown eyes, brimming with apprehension, looked back at him. Levon kissed his brow. “S’gonna be just fine.” He dragged two fingers up Robbie’s neck, chin, tiny carved softness below the lip and then slipped his fingers into Robbie’s mouth. 

Tongue prodded the space between each finger, and two free hands stroked up and down Levon’s chest, gripping his shoulders, sweeping down over his stomach, resting at the beltline, going up again. Touching, assuring his reality, some hard sturdy actuality in the tumult and great storm they lived in now. No day was determined, no next meal or bed assured. But flesh was here; warm love and a warm mouth. Getting to be intrinsic to somebody else. 

A car shot over the ridge, head-on headlights high, and in a flash, they separated. The car flew past. Levon sat perfectly still, and Robbie clasped both hands together in his lap to hold down the shake. His heart pounded. 

They both waited for the screech of tires, car coming up behind them this time. Levon’s right hand had gone for the gun on the seat. But nothing happened. The night lingered on, the cicadas continued their song, and the stillness that pervaded was so delicate. Robbie didn’t know why it wouldn’t shatter. 

Eventually, Levon turned again to look at him. “You okay?” He patted Robbie’s thigh. “Hate it every time stuff like that happens.” 

“Scary.”

“Hey,” Levon said. “It’s gonna be fine. As I recall, I was about to kiss you.”

And so he did, gently, then with insistence, nose pressing into Robbie’s own and his cheek, all over. Tongue in his mouth, licking his lips, a broad path up his cheek, to the high point of his cheekbone. The fingers that held his face in place were still slightly damp with spit. 

“I love you,” Robbie said. 

“I love you, too.” Levon leaned back to appraise his prey. “My Bonnie.” Robbie nuzzled to kiss him again. “If this works, we’ll never be poor again.”

“Only for a while.”

“We got a whole West waiting for us, then. Games and dives and gas stations and the whorehouses out in Nevada. A whole damn country. Then who cares if we ever have to play again.”

“But I like playing.”

“Then we play hard and live rich and never gotta worry again about anything.”

“Ever again?”

“Ever.” Kissing again. “What do you want, baby? Tell me. Whatever you want. An’ when we’re rich, disgustingly rich, I’ll get it for you.”

Well, hell. There were many things Robbie wanted. Food, a better bed. His life was the road but maybe a road that didn’t hurt so much. But these were material things. Things he could suffer without. He hadn’t been born rich; who said he had to die that way? 

“You.”

“What?”

“You. I just want you. That’s all I want. If you’re asking what you can give me. Forever and ever and hell, we can get married to women and have babies and big houses and—”

“I don’t want any of those.”

“Thank God, neither do I.” Robbie stopped for a second to breathe, near tears. “But if we do, I just want you to give me yourself. That’s it.”

Levon stared at him. He panted, unblinking. Robbie worried he’d asked for too much. 

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Of course. S’all I really want, too. Nothing else.”

And eventually, smiling to themselves, Levon pulled the car off the road, one hand on the wheel, the other one holding Robbie’s. 

Dead-of-night pacts, on the brink of lawlessness, where love was as reckless as any other greed. 

On the drive back to the motel, nobody spoke. 

Jay dropped them at their door and sped off. Three shapes hovered behind the second room’s window. Then the door opened, and Rick and Richard came out swinging, pestering, wanting to know what the fuck happened. Garth waited behind. 

Without a word, eyes downcast, Levon got his door unlocked and disappeared inside. Robbie had no choice but to follow him. 

Fists knocked, and voices whined for answers. Levon was already undressing in the bathroom. Robbie sat on his bed awkwardly, staring at his hands and ignoring the pounding outside until it drifted away. 

Amidst the simmering embarrassment of the game being called off, and having to really observe how far they’d found themselves—guns and ski masks and the realization that neither of them could’ve probably pulled it off—Robbie reflected on the thoughts he’d had when they’d pulled up to the lot. 

That they could’ve both gotten really hurt, and he would’ve been okay with that. That they could’ve gotten arrested, and he would’ve been okay with that, too. A roughed up reputation might’ve held okay with the Southern crowd, but any aims at breaking into the serious industry—keeping Le Coq d’Or approval, earning the respect of Brill Building execs—would’ve been toast. 

Play a cheap dirty joint until you’re starving and dead. Or go back to Toronto, enroll in university. First, he might have to finish high school. Get a dead-end sorta job like his mom did. Levon could go down to the Gulf, like he always said he would one day. Wouldn’t that be a place to end up? And that would be it. That was the dream. Over. 

They could’ve gotten arrested. Hurt. They could’ve gotten killed, really. Gunned down like the outlaws they wanted to be. The chances of them being the only ones with guns in the place would’ve been low. 

What had they been thinking? 

They could’ve died.

The bathroom door opened, and Levon emerged down to his underwear. The curtain was drawn, but they liked to pin up a second heavier bedsheet. He went and did that, still quiet. 

_If you would’ve died,_ Robbie thought, silent and staring at Levon’s profile against the sheet, _that would’ve been it. I would’ve done it right there. If you’d died, I would’ve had to kill myself. We had two guns. No problem. Not a doubt in my mind, would’ve been happy to go join you._

“I didn’t know they were gonna call it off,” Levon finally said. He was tense, riled, already bristled like he was expecting opposition. Satisfied with the window, he took a seat on his own bed across from Robbie.

“How could you have known? I had no clue. Neither did Jay. S’alright.” Robbie let his mask fall to the floor by his shoe. “Probably better that way, anyways.”

“We’re still gonna wake up tomorrow hungry.” 

“Well, that’s when we go in and nab some stuff. Better than being dead.”

“Oh, we weren’t gonna die.” Levon waved a hand, irritated.

“You don’t know that,” Robbie said neutrally. “Look,” he stood and took Levon’s hand in his. “It all worked out." Levon wrapped an arm around his middle, pulled him close, and kissed him above the belt through his t-shirt. Then he rested his ear against Robbie’s navel, and they just waited there, in the silent still of the night, so silent and still. Here in a place so alone and forgotten, but so together with one another.

“But it didn’t,” Levon eventually mumbled against his stomach. 

“How so?” Robbie said gently, stroking his hair.

“Oh, ‘cause we don’t got any money, baby. I said I was gonna make you rich. I was gonna buy you all you wanted.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of time to make it. And that’s not what I said I wanted.” Waxing strangely maternal, the way he held Levon close. “I said I wanted you. Forever. And since you didn’t fucking die out there tonight, I still have you forever.”

“You’re too kind to me.”

“Hm?” 

“I don’t tell you that enough. That I ain’t always worth that endless love you got, Duke.”

“Of course you are!” Robbie kissed his forehead. “I don’t give you enough, sometimes, I think.”

“I’m rotten, Duke. You’re gonna figure that out soon enough.”

“Where’s this all coming from?” Robbie sat next to him on the bed. 

“Christ, I hate these fucking beds. Nailed to the fucking floor. Can’t push ‘em together. Gotta cram into one.”

“We make do, eh?” Robbie smiled wryly. “Lee, where’s all this—”

“Oh, I don’t wanna talk about it. Today turned out so shitty, I’m in some shit mood. Don’t wanna discuss it. Hand me that pack, would you?”

Robbie grabbed the Marlboros on the bedside and shook it. “Finally wanna split it?” He squinted into the box like more would appear if he looked harder.

“Goddammit.” Levon scratched at his palms. “I’m all wound up.”

“We could’ve bought some beer on the way home.”

“We’re _broke!_ ” he half shouted. Robbie wondered if the tone should’ve scared him; he laughed instead. 

“Guess we’ll have to make it last then.”

“You know, I like a cigarette after I fuck you.”

“If you’re all wound up,” Robbie said, and kissed his ear. “I’d be happy to help.”

“Like you got a choice,” and Levon tackled him to the mattress. Robbie hugged him close, lovingly, and realizing, to kiss him again, that he could’ve lost this. All of it. If things tonight had gone to plan. That the plan had failed, but it wasn’t failure after all, because he still had what he loved so much. 

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Levon repeated, and Robbie kissed him deeply. At first, before they truly knew each other, Robbie hadn't imagined Levon to be so quick with his vulnerability.

Perhaps he felt he needed to be rough, a spit in the face to the comfortable Canadian suburbia the rest of them came from. Or something had toughened him up from being at this job longer than the others. But sometimes, sometimes, his vulnerability was all he had, and Robbie couldn’t believe somebody else wanted to be so naked with him. 

“I love you, too.” 

“My Bonnie,” Levon said again, and held Robbie’s face in his hands like one might hold the world. 

“Clyde.” Robbie played the game. Trying on names like trying on clothes and different shades of life.

Childhood had been dusted in the blue and white of winter, and the frozen slide of metal and orange amber of the streetlights that trickled down to the ice on the roads. Peeling summers, and cotton shirts and scratched Arkansas grass, and bright saturation he’d never seen before. The present was dim, shadowed and chalked, gravel and grit, and skinning his knees and taking in smoke and burnt bits of life. Living was stark and straggling, where he was a bit too conspicuously dark for anyone’s liking, and people tried to figure him out, and he couldn’t even figure himself out, but maybe Levon had, and that was all that mattered. 

“Bonnie.”

“Clyde.”

“Duke.”

“Lee.”

_Take me out of my own name and take me out of time, just for a second, and when we become so many other names to so many other people_

 _jaime, robbie, lavon, levon, lee, duke, mr. helm, royal, honey, do you take Dominique Bourgeois to be your lawfully wedded wife, mrs. robertson, then, bobby, robert, zimmerman, and dylan thomas, and mom and dad, momma and Jim, and little children who clutch at his legs and call him papa, their mother taught them but he doesn’t want to learn her language anymore,_ and then life turned different, drifted away from the dusty neon of Fayetteville, swirling into the glitter of Midtown on three am Wednesdays, Bob at his side. Green and deep again, the smell of upstate summer, and other things, better neon now, along Sunset. He was naked in the Pacific, swimming with his Levon. They’re warmed with beer and the day above is dying; the sky’s sugar spun and the same color as the clubhouse back in Saugerties. 

Take my name, to have and to hold, and take us all out of time. Because we’re out of it, too. This is the end, beautiful friend. And wasn’t it a wild ride? 

“Robbie?”

It was his name. The one he’d given himself. And it was very far away.

“Robbie.”

Marty was looking at him.

“Robbie, are you alright?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He must’ve drifted off into his own memories. “What’s that?” Confused. Like being woken from a nap. 

“Robbie,” Marty repeated, serious this time. He laid a light hand on Robbie’s knee. “You okay? Do you wanna take a break?”

“Hmm?” 

“Guys, let’s take a break, why don’t we? We got more shooting this evening, Go on.”

The crew scampered. 

“There, you got water there, by your arm, an…”

Robbie drank and didn't understand the fuss. He’d just been talking, filling in the highlights of the poker game, some bits redacted. 

Disoriented, Robbie drank, and Marty stood to light a cigarette and switch off the reel. He’d see what they could do with the footage later. Might have to cut all of it out. Robbie had talked for a full minute, gotten lost in his head for a second, and now, the only thing held in the frame were wild brown eyes, lost and full of tears. 

The day drones on relentlessly. 

Coming out of the dark theater is painful, again into the blinding Los Angeles afternoon sun. The theater sits on a corner, and cars fly past without a second thought to the man on the sidewalk. The day keeps going. Undisturbed.

A hot breeze stirs up and blows his hair back. Robbie slips his sunglasses on and stands there for a second, watching the traffic and trying to figure out what to do. He lights a cigarette to prolong the moment, because he really doesn’t know what happens next. 

Oh, to be the edge of something great again. To have life out there and waiting for your hands. 

A small crowd of teenagers exit the theater, race around him and tear across the street, laughing loudly. He’d seen them when the lights had come up. What had they thought of the film?

On the opposite side of the street, a band of girls walk along in shorts and swimsuits, and three boys on skateboards zip past them. A car stops at the light, an older married couple inside, arguing but arguing gently, lovingly, and the light turns and the car speeds on. Many cars follow. Some people look lonely, others have a hand out an open window. A Karmann Ghia with two teenage boys flies past and honks at him for no discernible reason, and the music is loud and the boys laugh and push at each other. 

So the day drones on relentlessly. Indifferent to his pain. 

Robbie smokes the cigarette down, standing there and watching. He could go home, he supposes. Or over to Marty’s. Or even to Bob’s, if he’s looking for something familiar and warm. He could go to the beach; there’s a towel in his trunk and a decent little stash of grass in the glove compartment. A Canyon drive, or down the Boulevard, alone. 

So many places and faces and things to see. 

So Robbie flicks the spent cigarette down and starts off to his car, no particular direction home.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! And here we are. The actual end. Sorry to update so late. It turned into more of an additional chapter than an epilogue, all while happening during my semester finishing. Oh well.
> 
> Took some risks in this, changed tense inconsistently too many times, and hopefully answered any lingering questions and wrapped everything up okay enough. (TW for the aftermath of domestic abuse and an explicit discussion of suicide.)
> 
> And lastly, thank you guys so so much for sticking with me on this and reading it! I've loved having you all along for the ride.

Late November, San Francisco, 1976

One more attempt at love. 

Levon booked his hotel room an extra week, Robbie kicked around with his family for a few days, sent them home, and moved in with Levon. 

One more attempt to do things right and to do right by each other. 

They slept late, woke to cream sheets, noon sunlight, warm skin, hungry pink mouths and white wet teeth. They ordered gluttonous amounts of breakfast just because they could, even if neither of them had much of an appetite these days. Hot coffee out of china cups and cocaine off each other’s bodies. 

Walking in the afternoons, where you could lean a little closer than normal and still they were left alone, roaming, anonymous. Wasn’t San Francisco a marvelous thing?

Robbie indulged and bought an overcoat on Fillmore Street; dark with a sable trim, and Levon said it made him look like a gangster when he wore his hat, too, and smoked in the cold nearly-Christmas weather. 

Gangsters? Robbie said, and laughed and pointed out Alcatraz Island, occupied from ‘69 to ‘71, and said the effort, the disobedience, made him want to call Dolly and thank her. For what, he didn’t know. 

Levon took his picture by the Bay Bridge and promised to hide the film and get it developed years from now, when they were both much older and nostalgic for sweet secret love. They bought cherries and South American peaches at a market by their hotel and ate the fruit in bed, stained the sheets, licking sticky fingers, smearing red sugar over flesh like rubbing around in fresh blood. 

An evening ride when the sun went down, rock me baby, and Robbie was just a dark shape against the sunset window, head back, crying out, enraptured. 

Mirrors again. Stare at yourself, stare at me, towel down, intertwined, naked and pressing together, kissing, just shy of drunk off the champagne they ordered every evening. 

Mirrors made them vain. Weren’t usually. Or rather pretended not to be, preening in private. These days, here in a city far from their lives, they were whatever monsters lurked beneath the politeness they were raised on. 

Dusted deep brown underneath browner eyes, at the outer corner to pull a high gaze even higher. Levon trims his beard meticulously, combs his hair seventeen different ways. Robbie watches him affectionately, then goes and dresses alone. More tricks up his sleeve. The bathroom reeks of smoke and sex and hairspray, and they leave a messy bed and broken champagne coupes for the glimmer of the Castro. 

They end up on a dance floor, soaked in drugs and sweat and the love of the hundreds of moving bodies around them. 

Surprising one another and themselves, never had they felt so far from the soft country of Woodstock or the brilliant heat of Arkansas. Who were they now, these long nights? Letting people slip pills under their tongues and feeling each other up in the neon lights. 

Was this backsliding? Falling in love again, heedlessly? Or something senseless, where they came in already turned on, hot and heavy, hard from the music and not each other? 

Robbie led a boy on for what seemed like hours. Danced up to him, and the walls bled the color of Big Pink, and a man next to Levon had fifteen hands, and as he watched Robbie’s mating dance, bold in intent, hollow in promise, a halo bloomed around his head. 

Snarl, and pull him back into your orbit, a hand on his hip, crush your souls together. Laughing at the possessiveness, Robbie slings his arms around Levon’s neck, and holds him close. 

Donna said she felt love, _take me I’m yours_ , and Santa Esmeralda, that’s right, _if I seem edgy I want you to know I never meant to take it out on you, never ever, baby, you got that? I'm sorry. Let’s try again. Cristal and white cake for another sixteen years, didn’t mean to take it out on your sweet face. If I had a ring, I’d give it to you. You’d wear it then, wouldn’t you?_

The tile hurts Robbie’s knees. It’s wet, too. Soaks through his pant legs. With what, he doesn’t wanna know. 

Walls pulse with sound, here it’s so dim, and underneath the stall is a window of bare feet and boots and heels. His legs aren’t nice enough for that. 

Last thing he ate was ice cream in bed, to finish off the evening meal of liquor and smokes, waiting to go out, impatient, Levon had been taking too long to get ready. 

Now Levon doesn’t take long at all, and Robbie’s mascara runs. Nose going, too. God, when had this ever been enjoyable?

 _Lemme do you, I wanna, baby, c’mon,_ so Robbie stands and unzips and—

“Holy hell, whose are those?”

“Dominique’s…” Nervous, unsure if he’d taken it a step too far.

“And they fit?”

“Surprised as you are. A bit tight up the back, but I guess that’s just the cut.”

“She knows you took ‘em?”

“No.”

“Shit...same color as your scarf...hell.”

“So you don’t hate it?”

“Baby, you should’ve done this years ago.”

Lick him through the lace, slip a thumb under the satin string on the side, rub his hip. Shirt unbuttoned, clinging to his skin with sweat, and then his stomach is being kissed, until all parts of him grow interested, and there’s something to suck down. 

The molly blinds him. Bends his sight, and shakes the air, and the walls are leaning and deep blue and Levon glows. Robbie grips his arm, under his shirt, where his collar has opened even wider, purple glitter on his shoulder, half-hidden, sweeping down his chest. How had he not noticed it before? Painted on. Shining. It comes off on his fingers like fairy dust, better than the powder up his nose. 

Release is falling, plummeting downward, and Levon catches him before he can crash. They gotta go, other boys want the stall now, and so they end up in a corner, watching the dance floor and smoking. 

A leather outfit takes center stage, doing wicked things that don’t seem legal to do in public, on a crowded floor, and it finally offends Robbie’s sensibilities, he has children, and so they leave, out into the cool early morning air, stumbling and spent, heading for home. 

“I think I’m in love with Emmylou.”

“Who isn’t.”

Four-thirty in the morning and cheap styrofoam cup coffee, staring at each other in the elevator. They’d walked all the way back from the Castro through the fog, too restless for an easy cab. Robbie’s new coat is already dirty, and Levon looks taut and irritable without mother’s milk. 

“You regret not asking her out?” Robbie asked.

“What, for a drink? She’s married.”

“Saw you go up to her after.” He smiled. “You’re charming enough. Besides, since when has _marriage_ stopped you?”

They got out on their floor. 

“Ain’t nothing wrong with talking about music, Duke. She sang the hell out of Evangeline. Since you don’t sing…”

“She did.” Robbie rubbed his mouth, staring out at the carpet, putting each foot in front of the other and wondering if it was possible to feel the tick of his watch against his wrist as he did now. He examined a button on his coat, and swiped a bit of lint off the sleeve. His nose and ears were frozen from the December air yet still burning up from the club. Sweating out the drugs and gin. “That she did…” He downed the last of his coffee. 

“And you played the hell out of it, too.”

“We all did.” Diplomatic. Robbie got the key out and unlocked their door. Levon trailed in right behind him, already getting handsy. “You really do it all, don’t you?”

“Hm?” 

“Singing and playing guitar and mandolin and drums—”

“Can bang a few chords out on the piano, too.”

“See what I’m saying?”

“Oh, don’t play modest.”

“Eh?”

“Acting like we’re all so special to you.” 

“She sang the hell out of Evangeline,” Robbie said finally. Repeating. “Given the circumstances.”

He hung his coat up and kicked off his shoes. The bed was unmade, unwelcoming, cold, and the bathroom was a mess of glass and glitter and general chaos, boys who couldn’t clean their rooms properly, not having any mothers or wives around to pick up after them.

Levon took the easy route and swept the counter clean with his arm, all their shit right into the tub, where more stuff clattered and shattered and Robbie just laughed because possessions were nothing, unlike obsessions, and they liked getting messy and childish anyways. 

He went to wash his face, but Levon stopped him and kissed the dirty tracks of makeup down his cheeks. 

“Leave it. Like it that way.”

“S’dirty.”

“You bet it is, baby.”

“That’s not how I meant it. Can I at least brush my teeth?”

“Be my guest.” Levon handed him the toothpaste. “You really write that the day of?” 

“What?”

“Evangeline.” He arched an eyebrow. “Well...ain’t all you. You swiped it off that Henry—”

“Wadsworth Longfellow?”

“That.”

“Oh, not entirely.”

“Do tell.” 

Silence for a long time as they brushed their teeth, and something about bristles over enamel, that wet soaped up sound of foam, the ache in his shoulders and greater ache in his knees made Robbie uncomfortable. Searching for a comfort that just wasn’t there anymore, as much as they tried to deny it. Gave themselves shows to play and little daily dalliances, car rides and still sitting next to one another when it was expected. Whispering, hushed, because people expected them to laugh about things, like brothers, even when there wasn’t anything left to say. 

This whole trip. The hotel, the shagged out bed, how Levon had held Robbie’s hand on the walk home, fully confident here, in a city like this, that they were safe doing so. All of it, a ruse, stalling, in denial of what had just defined them. A last waltz if there had ever been one. Curtain down and bed made, and _God, sometimes you make me feel so deep, so unendingly, and it’s exciting and scary, and what scares me more is how much I’m in love with the sadness of knowing that you and I aren’t supposed to go on forever, that we gotta part ways sometimes, and why do I like crying myself to sleep thinking of you leaving me? Damn you. Goddamn you._

“S’one thing to pull something fake out of thin air. I don’t know.” Robbie shrugged and spat out more toothpaste. “Real life isn’t that difficult.” 

“Real life is the hardest shit there is.”

All finished and clean, Robbie kissed him softly, kept his eyes as open as he could, and took good time to separate, watching their connectedness in the mirror. Then he turned Levon’s head forward, too, so they had no choice but to stare at themselves. 

“You’re too sullen. When did you get so mad?”

“Always been.”

“Nah,” Robbie nipped his ear. “I don’t believe it.” 

“A man ain’t mad until he’s mad at you.”

A misstep, quick as flight. Robbie’s eyes went dark. Embarrassed. He let Levon go and went and climbed into bed. 

“I didn’t make Evangeline up.”

“Got that part.” Levon climbed in next to him and took his hand. “Baby, I’m too fuckin’ tired...you wore me out tonight. Jus’ go and say what you mean.”

Robbie stared at their clasped hands, unmoving, unblinking. At last he said, “Evangeline and Sam had it good, you know? And then Sam gets swept up. On the boat, his gambling, maybe even a woman, I don’t know. Something way greater than him, something he got no control over, and he gets pulled away, drowning, dying, and all Evangeline can do is stand and watch, just slowly going insane. I can’t make this up, Levon. You’re…”

Robbie finally looked at him. He was so so tired, face-fucked and strung out. Something pretty in the night had melted down to exhaustion and abuse: the man hidden underneath all his disguises and different names and suave deflections.

“I don’t know what to do, Levon. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything, and begged and pled and reasoned, and I don’t know what to do anymore. You’re gonna die, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

He put his hands over his face, beyond ashamed, and was so pitifully pulled close, held like a child. 

“Don’t die on me, don’t die, don’t _leave me_. Don’t leave me like you did before. S’all anyone does, an’ I can’t—” It broke into a sob. 

Levon wished he couldn’t hear the pain, the raw ugliness of it, echoing into the stagnant morning. Primal and broken, calling for whatever lurked in the darkness outside like it might howl back. 

Did he have a scar? Along the bridge of his sloping nose, so often hidden by shades and frames and wire rims. 

So Levon went looking for it, and found it and said nothing about it, and kissed the space between Robbie's brows, and promised him eternity. 

Summer, Los Angeles, 1975

The sounds outside are muddied in the night.

Cars on the road, cars even farther off on the 1, Sara in the living room playing the piano, children upstairs all tucked in and asleep. Ocean at the porch door. All blended together underneath the scratch of pen on paper, and Bob got up to refill his cup and fix himself a few slices of toast, and it occurred to him that this only used to happen on a typewriter and amphetamines. In lonelier places than these. 

A car swung into the driveway. At this hour? He heard it and then heard Sara get up to answer the door. 

“Bobby, Bobby, get in here.” 

Robbie stood there, half held up in Sara’s arms. It took Bob a second to recognize the thing that had rolled up to the door tonight. Robbie’s entire face was covered in blood, crusted in some spots, fresh and glistening in others. Even his hair; the fringe was matted. Blood ran stark down his neck, too, over the sternum and slipping below where his shirt was buttoned, a few spatters on the cotton. 

The hands that clutched onto Sara for support were stained, too. 

“Jesus Christ.”

“Bobby, he needs help.”

“Hey, Robbie, I got you. C’mon with me, and Sara’s gonna be right back alright?”

She rushed upstairs to get the first aid kit. Bob took Robbie into his arms and led him to a waiting chair in the kitchen. Robbie leaned into the touch like it was the only thing keeping him going, but simultaneously recoiled from it, like any hand was too heavy. 

“Jesus Christ, Robbie. _Jesus_ , Jesus.” It was the only thing Bob could say. Robbie, dazed and smothered in blood, watched him dumbly. 

“Here,” and Sara brought him the kit, gave Robbie one sad-eyed look of her own, and left them be. 

“Holy hell,” Bob whispered. “What happened to you?”

Get a towel, run it soaking under the tap, pat the skin clean. Except when Bob did, to expose the source of such horrid, murky bleeding, Robbie yelled. 

“What? What?” Bob knelt, panicking. 

“The glass.”

“Glass?”

“Bathroom?”

“Yep, c’mon,” and Bob took him and the kit down the hall. 

“There’s glass.”

“Where?” 

Robbie’s fingers fluttered over the space between his eyebrows. Bob caught it now. He turned them into the light, got out the tweezers, and combed for any glittering bits. 

“Some on your cheeks, too. Oh, Robbie, what happened?” When he was silent, Bob continued. “Your eyes alright?” 

Robbie nodded. “Miracle,” he said quietly. 

Bob still didn’t know what had transpired to have such gruesomeness be standing before him now. 

“Okay, let’s try this again. We should get you in the tub.”

“No.”

“I can’t see where the blood’s even coming from. And I don’t want to make it worse. We gotta rinse it out.” 

“No.” Less sure now, crumpling. 

Bob unbuttoned Robbie’s shirt. And Robbie let him. He stood there passively, staring anywhere but Bob’s eyes, but brittle, like he could break at any moment. His own eyes were bloodshot. 

It was like all the times Jesse and Jakob got hurt and Bob had to clean them up and they just stood there, unsure, incapable, letting him fix it. 

“And your shoes.”

“Oh.” Robbie kicked them off. Bob knelt. Pants unbuttoned, dropped to his ankles. Bob helped him step out each pant leg. Then his underwear. His shirt slid off his shoulders like losing wings. 

“There you go.”

“Thank you.” Just a whisper.

“Of course.”

“Gimme your hand”

He helped Robbie, still bleeding, get in. 

“Okay, turning the tap on. Can you bend to it? Get your face…” 

Slowly, the water ran, and Robbie let it cover him. 

“There, mmhm, there you go…” Bob cradled his head under the stream. When Robbie pulled away and brushed back his wet hair, the blood was all but gone, and he was clean. 

Bob saw it now. A thin gash between his eyebrows. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve easily been a lot worse, deeper, deadlier.

“Robbie.”

“Hm?”

“Who did this?”

“What?”

“Who did this to you?”

“Nah, s’my fault.” He drew his legs up. 

“Robbie,” and Bob took his chin and twisted so he would look. Then he saw that Robbie was crying. “Jesus fucking Christ.” 

“Please, please, don’t…”

“What?”

“You can’t tell anyone. You can’t.” He cried harder. “ _Bobby._ ” 

“Robbie.”

“You can’t tell anyone or say something or…” Robbie grabbed his arm, dug in like it was the only last thing in the whole world to hold. Absolutely terrified. “Because if he finds out that you did…”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I’m so sorry.” Then he bent to the water, head in his hands, and his whole body shook.

For a long time, they sat that way. Robbie cried, and Bob rubbed his back. Cupping handfuls of water, drawing it up over his spine and neck, thumbs digging at the spot of the back and skin just above the surface line, again, even softer this time, the water a soothing mantle, it’s own rhythm. Outside, there was a quiet patter of footsteps. But Sara must have heard their sounds, because the footsteps left soon after that. Then it was just them again. 

“Robbie, you need to leave.” 

“No.”

“I will help you.”

“S’all anyone says to me. That I gotta _go_. Dominique says it, and you’re saying it, but you don’t…”

“Don’t _what_? Understand? I don’t think there’s much to figure out.” 

“I _can’t._ ” Crying again.

Bob immediately regretted getting him worked up. But Christ, it was some of the most sickening shit he’d seen in a long while. All of it. 

“Call Dominique,” Robbie said suddenly. 

“What?” 

“She’s waiting for me. She doesn’t know what happened. Tell her I’ll be home soon.” 

“Robbie, you aren’t going home like this.”

“ _Call her._ ” He was quietly furious. 

So Bob went and got Sara and made her call and when he returned to the bathroom, Robbie was still sitting there, staring at his feet. 

“Bobby, I can’t leave and you know it.” 

Bob said nothing. He leaned against the door, hands behind his back, watching Robbie impartially. 

“‘Cause it’s not just leaving him. It’s leaving the Band, the whole fucking thing, and if I’m not around to keep an eye on him, then—”

“Jesus Christ, why do you care!”

Robbie turned his head to face Bob, and was suddenly, for a single lingering moment, so severe and scowling and sure of himself that Bob was scared.

“Bobby, I wish it was a choice. I wish.” 

“I think almost anything is a choice.”

“Was Sara a choice, then? Falling in love with her? Could you control that?”

“What are you admitting, Robbie?”

“As if you don’t already know. I go, I leave that fucking mess, and they all go. Over the edge. Gone.”

“Then end it. For everyone.”

“I’ve _tried._ ” 

“Then clearly you haven’t tried hard enough.”

Robbie hugged his knees to his chest and looked down, away from Bob’s face. 

“You’re sleeping here tonight. Told Dominique you were. And she doesn’t know,” Bob added quickly. 

“I don’t know why I keep coming to you. I know how you feel, and how I feel…” 

“Because you know how you feel differs from what you _should_ feel. And I’m on the other side of that fence, watching you nearly get yourself killed to save another man, and it pains me like nothing else, man. So you come here for the truth, no matter how much it hurts. No matter how much you don’t wanna see it.” Bob came and knelt by the bath’s edge, got his arms up and leaned close enough to see each of Robbie’s eyelashes and the lighter amber flecks in those deep dark eyes, those sad exhausted eyes, and how the lines around them had grown deeper than they were nearly thirteen years ago since they’d first met. And the ugly split between his brows, and Bob stared and stared until Robbie couldn’t take the scrutiny anymore and looked away. 

“I’ll hold the mirror up, then. For you. Want you seeing yourself the way I gotta suffer it. What’s it gonna take, huh?” Bob ducked in and kissed the shell of Robbie’s ear. “What’s it gonna take for you to leave?”

In the end, the answer is absolutely nothing. 

Sunday, December fifth, 1976, and the bright noon sun has burned the fog clean off the skyline, but San Francisco remains cold. 

Robbie wakes up alone. Goes looking for his love in the other room of the suite and then the bathroom, and only then does he realize that all of Levon’s things are gone, too. Even the other side of the bed is neatly made. 

Blind optimism, desperation, is looking for a note, and by the time Robbie finishes scouring and climbs back into bed, naked and shivering and sad, he feels foolish. 

He has made it to the morning. 

White walls, white sheets, asleep, naked and breathing alone. He has made it to the morning, and the light that comes in the bedroom window is bright and brilliant, and Robbie half-wishes he hadn’t woken at all.

So he lights a smoke and lays back on the big bed and opens the gates for whatever tears want to come, but nothing happens, as hard as he tries. Before he can stop himself, he’s picking up the bedside phone and dialing. It rings a while, and for a second, he’s terrified the other end won’t pick up. But Bob answers. 

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hey there. And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Bob doesn’t seem to understand the severity of the call. Or rather, the stagnation of it. Robbie wonders how deep a person can feel until such depth becomes a void. 

“Where are you now?” Robbie asks. “Home?”

“Yes. Alone. And you?” An arched brow, leaning salacious, and Robbie realizes again Bob doesn’t understand the call. How could he?

“Still up in San Francisco.”

“Oh, you stayed?”

“Yeah, I stayed.”

“With who?”

“My family.”

“And?” The enticing tone in Bob’s voice has disappeared. 

“Oh, come off it.”

“Please.”

“Him. I stayed with him. We stayed. _Together._ ”

“He there now?” 

Robbie takes a deep drag and pushes at his left temple. “No.”

“Oh. I see. Well, did you at least enjoy yourself?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did he?” Insistent, following a long silence. “ _Did he?_ ”

“God, I don’t know!” Robbie snaps. “I don’t know! It’s torture. Absolute torture, you understand? Day and night, I’m in complete agony. I can’t tell.”

The brief silence on the other end says his outburst surprises them both. Finally, Bob asks, “You can’t?”

“No! No, I can’t. I can’t ever tell.” Still half-shouting. “Whether I mean something to him, if he still loves me, or if I’m something else. Something dumb. A plaything. Entertainment.” By the end, he’s run-out. Breathless and quiet again.

“I always thought it was pretty clear what you were.” 

“And what might that be, if it’s so clear to you, oh Enlightened One?”

“You can’t be that upset if you’re still taking cracks at me.”

“I’ve always time to be funny.” Unseen, Robbie draws one bare leg up to his chest like armor. “Please, if it’s so obvious to everyone, just tell me.”

“Robbie, honey, did something happen? What’s going on?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You calling says otherwise.”

“Christ, just answer. Does he care?”

“Well, he certainly cares to a degree, if you’re both still at this nonsense two decades out. You’re not a walk in the park, man. And why are you asking me? Ask him.”

“Sixteen years out, I’m not ancient.”

“I just don’t know if…” Bob pauses and bites his lip. “I don’t know if this is how you show someone you love ‘em.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if what he does is him loving you.”

“He got a really nice room,” Robbie glances around the place, at the gilded molding and the dirty bed sheets and the expansive view of the city. He cut his finger a few days ago, on a shattered rim of a champagne glass full of expensive champagne, the scars of pleasure, and Levon had pushed him back onto the mattress and licked the blood up until Robbie was squirming and hard under him. 

“...and we did plenty of enjoyable things. Took my picture by the Bay Bridge, and we went out every night, until we couldn’t stand straight enough to walk home. There was this wonderful market down the street from our hotel and everyday we’d buy a bag of fruit, these South American peaches, and…” He falters and lights another cigarette. His fingers shake when he brings them to his mouth. 

“Yes, but was he kind?”

“Kind?”

“Yes. Kind. You know, how we are to one another, and how you are to Dominique and your daughters and your mom and—”

“You can’t be kind all the time.” 

For a long, painful moment, neither speak. 

“Robbie, my heart breaks for you.”

“Hey, I got a question.”

“And that would be?”

“When you crashed your bike...were you trying to kill yourself?”

“What?”

“When you wrecked your motorcycle, was it on purpose?”

“Robbie, I don’t think you want me to answer that.”

“And I think I _do_ want you to. I think you already did, anyways. What’s the matter, then, with saying it aloud? God knows you’ve said everything else.”

“Yes, then. If you want an answer, an honest one. I was trying to kill myself. To end the misery, the heartache…”

“And the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

Bob laughs. It shouldn’t be funny. 

“Zelda Fitzgerald tried it, too,” Robbie says absently.

“Killing herself?” Bob whispers the ‘killing’ as if that softens any blows and makes sensitive a subject already well and broached. “Robbie, are you alone right now? I don’t if I like—”

“Threw herself down a flight of stairs. Took too many pills.” 

“Both?”

“Well, the first part wasn’t that. Fitzgerald was notoriously vocal about cheating on her. Antagonizing, you know? So absolutely bastardly to her that I suppose she didn’t know what else to do.” 

“She ended up in an institution, didn’t she?” 

Robbie stares at his nails, grimaces at his cuticles and says around his cigarette, “I don’t think that was justified. I don’t think she was crazy. I think she just _felt_ a lot, a bit too much, for him, and most of the time, people don’t know how to handle that. So they slapped a big old ‘crazy’ sign on her and called it.” 

“And this has got to do with what?”

“The place burned down in the end, the hospital she was in. They only identified her by her teeth and one of her slippers. How’s that for happily ever after?”

“When Shakespeare said that, you think he meant literally?”

“Huh?” Robbie raises his head. “Happily ever after?”

“No. The shocks that flesh is heir to. You think it was, you know, mental pain? Watching your mom fuck your uncle or having your dad die? Or more like being hit?”

“Why not both?” 

“You’d have some dual experience, then,” and what is so pithy in his head comes out cruel and cold. Immediately, he regrets it. “Sorry.” 

Robbie says nothing at first. Then finally, “Get thee to a nunnery…” he mumbles. “Had a point, I guess, telling Ophelia that. She was desperate about him and no matter what he did to tell her it was over, he couldn’t shake her. He thrashed her around a bit, and what did she go do? Goodnight, sweet ladies. Goodnight.”

Bob is a bit surprised at the unoriginal melancholy. “So sad we’re using Hamlet as our crutch, now?”

“Not a crutch, a mirror.”

“Yes, honey, I know. I’d be happy to be your Horatio. Laertes, even. Besides, I thought she drowned herself over Polonius dying.”

“Are you just adding to some list you got on me?” Robbie sneers. “Ugh.” He presses the ball of his palm to his forehead. There should’ve been a headache rattling around in there. After the night before. “You ever disappoint even yourself, Bobby?”

“All the time.” 

“You were right.”

“Usually am. What was I correct about this time?”

“I should’ve left. Like you said. Last year. I….” He scrubs his face again. “That’s no way to live your life, you know.” 

“Easier said than done, man.”

“Yeah, well, he beat me to it.”

“He left? You mean, with you? Had to go home sometime, right?”

Another uncomfortable silence, where Robbie fidgets on the bed a bit more. “You think it’s over? Really truly over?”

“You want it to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I can’t answer that. You won’t really tell me what happened.”

“I tried, too. After what he did.”

“Tried what?”

“You and your motorbike.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“A call from Dominique. About Alex.”

“Something bad?”

“No. Not at all. She needed a ride home.”

“So you stayed.”

“I wanted to give her all the rides home that Alexander never gave me. Or Jim, even. Lee was always complaining about being a shit dad, anyways. So I never crashed my bike. Figured it was the least I could do for my children.”

“Well, I did crash my bike and I’m still here. You are, too. And that’s good.” 

“Doesn’t entirely feel that way now.”

“What _happened?_ ”

“I don’t wanna talk about it. They’re buried together, you know.”

“Who is?”

“Zelda and Fitzgerald. Even after death, they’re still together, no matter how much they would’ve wanted something else or exactly that.” 

“You still thinking about that?”

Robbie closes his eyes and leans his head back on the headboard. For a moment, he wishes he weren’t so alone. Solitude is so private, but in this moment he feels remarkably lonely. And not just because he’s woken to no one but himself. Even Bob will do, all pale skin and curled hair and bright mouth, just someone anyone, in this bed right now. Where he can be held compassionately.

He wants a body atop his or to smell Bob’s scent, strongest and sweetest right under his ear, a place Robbie has kissed many times, when they're completely alone or making love. 

“You never scared me.” Robbie finally says. 

“I never what?”

“You never did anything to make me afraid of you. Thank you.”

“Robbie, I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I used to think that’s what taking something for granted was. Not worrying or being scared. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

Love shouldn’t ever have him looking over his shoulder and locked up in some dirty bathroom and trying to figure out how Dominique will put the kids to bed by herself, because he isn’t there to do it, or how she’ll explain he never will be again. 

He carries the scars of losing Alexander and the things Jim has done to him and the things many others have done, too, and he’s happy to carry all that if in doing so, he can shelter his children. Protect them the way no one has protected him. In fact, he wishes now, as a father himself, a man perhaps past the pinnacle of his career, that he could've gone back and protected himself, when he was nothing but a boy. 

That boy, the bright-eyed one, on his back in a green field in Arkansas, under a sky as boundless as his heart and what it had to give, and whoever was atop him, whatever hands held his body, did so with only love and care. When Robbie had let himself be cradled that way, when he’d given up everything because he never thought anything bad could happen if he did. 

“Robbie, you still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. I should go.”

“No, it’s alright. Just, um, just call me when you get home to Malibu, alright? So I know you’re home.”

“Why would I—” 

Before either of them understand fully, Robbie breaks. Bob stays quiet. Best, even, if he doesn't mention it at all. The cries sound muffled on the other end, as if in an attempt to keep them hidden. But he isn’t surprised. Robbie has been holding back tears since “I Shall Be Released”, and a man can only hold on for so long.

“I’m sorry, sorry, I gotta go.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Call when you’re home?”

“Yeah.” 

Robbie hangs up. Oh, how he hates this. All of it. And the true loneliness of everyone around him not-quite-understanding his pain. How deep it runs. How much he loves it. How he worries that painlessness isn’t _feeling_ at all, and maybe that’s why he's never truly developed a good solid knock-you-out-numb addiction. The hurt is agony, but it’s real and something to stand on as proof of his being here. Proof of his existence. Proof he wasn’t some mistake, no matter what Levon has said. 

Robbie wants to keep crying, indulgently. But that feels privileged, spoiled, and besides, the tears are gone as soon as they come. Like passing rain. Or a flash flood. He knows he is still a bit drunk, weepy, wet and masochistic. 

He is tired and sore, too, embarrassingly bruised on the knees. He showers, scrubs the old makeup off his face until he thinks he’ll bleed and digs his fingers into his skin until it stings. Suddenly he feels so ashamed and disgusting, and he wants to smash something, cut himself open, and go digging for whatever perversion has run his life for the past sixteen years. He aches, in more than just the heart, from where he’d let Levon in last night, let himself be laid down and fucked. 

_Look what you love right in the eye and don’t be surprised if they’re looking the other way._

Maybe the love will come back. The admiration. Give it time, a place to come back to it’s right shade and intensity. Or maybe it won’t this time. Maybe it’ll stick. Maybe you’re finally dumb enough to get hurt so bad you get smart. 

Robbie leaves the glass mess in the tub, and makes up his side of the bed, straightening himself in the full length mirror by the door. Home to his wife and children. A different man. Hopefully, someone new.

He pitches the coat. Bumped up in the elevator, alone, impulsive, and when he spies a full luggage cart in the lobby, unattended, he tosses the coat atop every other case, Castro slush and gravel matted in the coat’s sable hem. 

Christ, let somebody else deal with it. 

He’s done going insane.


End file.
